She is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna.
She devoted the last four decades of her life to studying theology (especially patristics)
and to charitable work and serving the poor. This extended to helping
the sick by allowing them entrance into her home where she set up a
hospital.
Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, clavicembalist and composer, was her sister.
Maria was recognized early on as a child prodigy; she could speak both Italian and French at five years of age. By her eleventh birthday she had also learned Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, and Latin, and was referred to as the "Seven-Tongued Orator".[5]
She even educated her younger brothers. When she was nine years old she
composed and delivered an hour-long speech in Latin to some of the most
distinguished intellectuals of the day. The subject was women's right
to be educated.
Agnesi suffered a mysterious illness at the age of 12 that was
attributed to her excessive studying and was prescribed vigorous dancing
and horseback riding. This treatment did not work - she began to
experience extreme convulsions, after which she was encouraged to pursue
moderation. By age fourteen she was studying ballistics and geometry.[5] When she was fifteen her father began to regularly gather in his house a circle of the most learned men in Bologna,[citation needed]
before whom she read and maintained a series of theses on the most
abstruse philosophical questions. Records of these meetings are given in
Charles de Brosses' Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which her father had published in 1738 as an account of her final performance, where she defended 190 theses.[5] Maria was very shy in nature and did not like these meetings.[citation needed]
Her father remarried twice after Maria's mother died, and Maria
Agnesi ended up the eldest of 23 children, including her half-siblings.
In addition to her performances and lessons, her responsibility was to
teach her siblings. This task kept her from her own goal of entering a
convent, as she had become strongly religious. Although her father
refused to grant this wish, he agreed to let her live from that time on
in an almost conventual semi-retirement, avoiding all interactions with
society and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics.[5] During that time, Maria studied both differential and integral
calculus. Fellow philosophers thought she was extremely beautiful and
her family was recognized as one of the wealthiest in Milan. Maria
became a professor at the University of Bologna.
nstituzioni analitiche
First page of Instituzioni analitiche (1748)
According to Dirk Jan Struik, Agnesi is "the first important woman mathematician since Hypatia (fifth century A.D.)". The most valuable result of her labours was the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana,
(Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth) which was
published in Milan in 1748 and "was regarded as the best introduction
extant to the works of Euler." [6] In the work, she worked on integrating mathematical analysis with algebra.[5] The first volume treats of the analysis of finite quantities and the second of the analysis of infinitesimals. A French translation of the second volume by P. T. d'Antelmy, with additions by Charles Bossut (1730–1814), was published in Paris in 1775; and Analytical Institutions, an English translation of the whole work by John Colson (1680–1760), the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, "inspected" by John Hellins, was published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres.[7] The work was dedicated to Empress Maria Theresa,
who thanked Agnesi with the gift of a diamond ring, a personal letter,
and a diamond and crystal case. Many others praised her work, including Pope Benedict XIV, who wrote her a complimentary letter and sent her a gold wreath and a gold medal.[5]Witch of Agnesi
Main article: Witch of Agnesi
The Instituzioni analitiche..., among other things, discussed a curve earlier studied and constructed by Pierre de Fermat and Guido Grandi. Grandi called the curve versoria in Latin and suggested the term versiera for Italian,[8] possibly as a pun:[9] 'versoria' is a nautical term, "sheet", while versiera/aversiera is "she-devil", "witch", from Latin Adversarius, an alias for "devil" (Adversary of God). For whatever reasons, after translations and publications of the Instituzioni analitiche... the curve has become known as the "Witch of Agnesi".
In 1750, on the illness of her father, she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy and physics at Bologna, though she never served.[5] She was the second woman ever to be granted professorship at a university, Laura Bassi being the first.[11]
In 1751, she became ill again and was told not to study by her doctors.
After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished
purpose by giving herself to the study of theology, and especially of the Fathers
and devoted herself to the poor, homeless, and sick, giving away the
gifts she had received and begging for money to continue her work with
the poor. In 1783, she founded and became the director of the Opera Pia Trivulzio, a home for Milan's elderly, where she lived as the nuns of the institution did (wikipedia)
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