Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Born

16 May 1718
Milan

Died

9 January 1799 (aged80)

Nationality

Italian

Fields

Mathematics

Institutions

University of Bologna

Knownfor

Namesake of the Witch of Agnesi curve

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (Italian pronunciation:[aezi, -esi; -zi])[1], (16 May 1718 9 January 1799) was an Italian
mathematician and philosopher.
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 Gaetana Agnesi

Early life
Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan, to a wealthy and literate family. Her father Pietro Agnesi, a University of
Bologna mathematics professor, wanted to elevate his family into the Milanese nobility. In order to achieve his goal
he had married Anna Fortunata Brivio in 1717. Her mother's death provided her the excuse to retire from public life.
She took over management of the household.
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". 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.Wikipedia:Citation needed
Agnesi's diploma from Universit di Bologna
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. When she was fifteen
her father began to regularly gather in his house a circle of the most learned men in Bologna,Wikipedia: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. Maria was very shy in nature and did not like these meetings.Wikipedia: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. 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.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Contributions to mathematics
Instituzioni analitiche
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
giovent 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." In the work, she worked on
integrating mathematical analysis with algebra. 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 (17301814), was
published in Paris in 1775; and Analytical Institutions, an English
translation of the whole work by John Colson (16801760), the
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, "inspected" by John
Hellins, was published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres.[2] The
First page of Instituzioni analitiche (1748)
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.
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,[3]
possibly as a pun:[4] '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".

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Other
Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the Trait analytique des sections coniques
du marquis de l'Hpital, which, though highly praised by those who saw it in
manuscript, was never published.[5]

Later life
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. She was the second woman ever to be granted professorship at
a university, Laura Bassi being the first.[6] 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.

Bust of Maria Gaetana Agnesi in

Milan.

Remembrance
Witch of Agnesi, a curve
A crater on Venus[7]
Asteroid 16765 Agnesi (1996)

References
[1] Canepari, L. (1999, 2009) Dizionario di pronuncia italiana (http:/ / venus. unive. it/ canipa/ pdf/ DiPI_3_A-Z. pdf). Bologna, Zanichelli.
[2] Analytical institutions... (four volumes), London, 1801
[3] C. Truesdell, "Correction and Additions for 'Maria Gaetana Agnesi'", Archive for History of Exact Science 43 (1991), 385386.
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]

Per Grandi: "...nata da' seni versi, che da me suole chiamarsi la Versiera in latino pero Versoria..."
S.M.Stigler, "Cauchy and the witch of Agnesi: An historical note on the Cauchy distribution", Biometrika, 1974, vol. 61, no.2 p. 375380
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911, p. 378
Pickover, Clifford. The Math Book. Sterling Publishing, 2009, p. 180.
Atlas of Venus, by Peter John Cattermole, Patrick Moore, 1997, ISBN 0-521-49652-7, p. 112 (http:/ / books. google. com/
books?id=R3hsaELH9bUC& pg=PA112& dq=agnesi+ crater+ venus& hl=en& ei=a53CTu_iMcmciALW3ojUCw& sa=X& oi=book_result&
ct=result& resnum=9& ved=0CFIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage& q& f=false)

This articleincorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Further reading
Larson, Ron; Hostetler, Robert P.; and Edwards, Bruce H. (2003). Calculus of a Single Variable: Early
Transcendental Functions (3rd edition). Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-22307-X.
"Maria Gaetana Agnesi", Biographies of Women Mathematicians (http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/
agnesi.htm), Agnes Scott College
Mathematics History archive entry for Maria Gaetana Agnesi at the University of Andrews, Scotland (http://
www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Agnesi.html)
EUROPEAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY,NEWSLETTER No. 31,March 1999, S. 18 (http://www.emis.de/
newsletter/newsletter31.pdf)
D. J. Struik, editor, A source book in mathematics, 12001800 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New
Jersey, 1986), pp.178180. ISBN 0-691-08404-1, ISBN 0-691-02397-2 (pbk).
Agnes Scott College, Women Mathematicians (http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/agnesi.htm)
CSULA Instructional Web Server (http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sgray/Agnesi/)
Kramer, Edna E. (1970). "Agnesi, Maria Gaetana". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. pp.7577. ISBN0-684-10114-9.
Mazzotti, Massimo (2001). "Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Mathematics and the making of the Catholic Enlightenment."
Isis. v. 92, n. 4: pp.657683.
Mazzotti, Massimo (2007). The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.

External links
Podcast about this scholar (http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1741.htm)
Google doodle commemorating Maria Agnesi's 296th birthday (http://www.google.com/doodles/
maria-gaetana-agnesis-296th-birthday)

Article Sources and Contributors

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