AGNESI, MARIA GAETANA

AGNESI, MARIA GAETANA. - Scholar of the mathematical sciences and educator, born in Milan on 16 May 1718 and died there on 9 Jan. 1799. Of precocious intelligence, while still a child she took part in the academies held at the home of her father, professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna, and at one of these, at the age of 9, she delivered a discourse by her teacher, translated by her into Latin: «oratio qua ostenditur artium liberalium studia foemino sexu neutiquam abhorrere». Besides the classical languages, she studied French, German, and Spanish; she applied herself to history and, especially, to philosophy; but the true field of her talent was mathematics. Her Istituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (1784) were so highly esteemed that they were translated into French (by D'Antelmy) and into English (by Colson). Pope Benedetto XIV himself congratulated her and offered her the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna. She did not accept it, but instead followed her vocation, devoting herself entirely to the care of the sick: first in her own home, where she had established a hospital, and then at the «Luogo pio Trivulzio», a refuge for unassisted old men and women, to which she was called in 1771 by the archbishop of Milan, and where she died after spending the last 15 years of her life as director, teacher, and nurse.