Born: 1590 (circa), France
Died: Unknown (after 1642)
Country most active: France
Also known as: Martine de Betereau Beausoleil, Martine de Chastelet
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Martine de Bertereau claimed that she and her husband used mysterious and esoteric methods to locate water, in what appears to have been early hydrogeology. For example, she claimed to use dowsing rods to find water, but a local doctor realised she had instead followed the water’s red, iron-rich deposits in the cobblestone back to its source. The revelation made people much more suspicious and contributed to their eventual downfall. The family were later accused of witchcraft and fled their native France for Hungary in 1628. Martine, her husband, and oldest daughter were later arrested, imprisoned in different locations and eventually died in prison after 1642.
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
France provides one of the best documented examples of a woman working independently and successfully in the field: Marie Meurdrac, as discussed above. Her near contemporary, Martine de Bertereau, was a mineralogist and mining engineer with her husband, so although in a cognate chemical field, not quite so demonstrably doing what we think of today as chemical engineering.