Maria Gaetana Agnesi (May 16, 1718 - January 9, 1799) was an Italian linguist, mathematician, and philosopher. Agnesi (pronounced 'Anyesi') is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus. She was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna. According to Dirk Jan Struik, Agnesi is "the first important woman mathematician since Hypatia (fifth century A.D.)".

Early life

Her father, Pietro, was a wealthy man of business who desired to elevate his family into the Milanese nobility. (Some historians have incorrectly identified him as a mathematics professor.)

Having been born in Milan, Maria was recognized as a child prodigy very early; she could speak both French and Italian at five years of age. By her eleventh birthday she had acquired Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, Latin, and was referred to as the "Walking Polyglot". She even educated her younger brothers. When she was 9 years old, she composed and delivered an hour-long speech in Latin to an academic gathering. The subject was women's right to be educated. When she was fifteen, her father began to regularly gather in his house a circle of the most learned men in Bologna, 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. These displays, being probably not altogether congenial to Maria (who wanted to retire) ceased by her twentieth year because she strongly desired to enter a convent at that time. Although her father refused to grant this wish, he agreed to let her live from that time on in an almost conventional 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. Pietro Agnesi also married twice more after Maria's mother died, so that Maria Agnesi ended up the eldest of 21 children. 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. Scholars thought she was dazingly beautiful and recognized as one of the riches noble families in Milan.

Contributions to mathematics

Instituzioni analitiche

First page of Instituzioni analitiche (1748)

Witch of Agnesi

Madame Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the Traite analytique des sections coniques of the marquis de l'Hôpital, which, though highly praised by those who saw it in manuscript, was never published. She discussed the curve known as the "witch of Agnesi" or "versiera" as she named it in 1748. The name derives from the Italian for the rope that turns a sail, taken from the Latin vertere, versus meaning "to turn," which was the term used by Luigi Grandi before her. Colson, who translated Agnesi's text to English, perhaps confused "la versiera" with "l'avversiera", and so mistranslated it as "she-devil" or "the witch", with the result that English-speakers and, for some reason, Spanish speakers from Mexico, Cuba, and Spain, know the curve as the "Witch of Agnesi" (La Bruja de Agnesi).). Struik mentions that:

Agnesi's diploma from Università di Bologna

y = \frac{8a^3}{x^2+4a^2}

where a is any non-zero constant. The equation

y = \frac{1}{x^2 + 1}

is the simplest among these.

References

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 at Bologna. She was the second woman to be appointed professor at a university. 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. After holding for some years the office of directress of the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns at Milan, she herself joined the sisterhood, and in this austere order ended her days, but no one knows how she died. A crater on Venus is named in her honor.

References

• 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, Agnes Scott College
• Mathematics History archive entry for Maria Gaetana Agnesi at the University of Andrews, Scotland
• EUROPEAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY,NEWSLETTER No. 31,March 1999, S. 18
• D. J. Struik, editor, A source book in mathematics, 1200-1800 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1986), pp. 178-180. ISBN 0-691-08404-1, ISBN 0-691-02397-2 (pbk).

Further reading

• Mazzotti, Massimo (2001). "Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Mathematics and the making of the Catholic Enlightenment." Isis. v. 92, n. 4: p. 657-683.
• Mazzotti, Massimo (2007). The world of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, mathematician of God. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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