It is well-known that the 18th century in France saw the multiplication of “salons” which were led by women and where mathematics or science could be discussed as well as literature. These well-known women usually brought together the brightest male minds of the time and were not really involved in the process of building or using mathematics and science.

Yet, some barely known women really took part in the process of developing science. Their records are very faint, and they cannot be easily traced : one has to investigate a broad field of sources to have access to their work. This invisibility, as has often been argued, is partly due to their exclusion of institutional positions and their confinement to the domestic sphere. This paper will present some of these “homemade” contributions to science and try to analyze them in terms of calculations, modeling or teaching and communicating. It will also underline the influence of domestic economy on the knowledge produced, as well as the importance of varied sources to understand their “choice” for homemade science.

This paper will especially study the very broad, in terms of geography and disciplines, networks these women created through homemade science. The analysis of these networks aims at questioning the invisibility of these women, who were in fact well-known to the “savants” of the Enlightenment, but were completely forgotten by historiography.