Who were the first university professors? – 08/29/2023 – Marcelo Viana

I share two more life stories I learned in “101 Incredible Women Who Transformed Science”.

The Italian Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799) was a child prodigy. By age 5 she was fluent in French in addition to her mother tongue, and by age 11 she also spoke Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin. As a teenager, she impressed her father’s friends with a speech about the right of women to learn “the fine arts and the sublime science.” In Latin.

By that time, he already showed a strong taste for mathematics, studying the works of the great specialists of his time. The desire to take care of her brothers and sisters – she was the eldest of the 21 children her father had in three marriages – prevented her from fulfilling her other great vocation in her youth: becoming a nun.

But this care resulted in the book “Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth”, which he wrote to teach mathematics to children. Translated into several languages, it brought him wide international recognition. Among the admirers, none other than Empress Maria Thereza, of Austria, and Pope Benedict 14.

The pontiff invited her to assume the chair of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Bologna. After her compatriot Laura Bassi, whom I’ll talk about below, Agnesi was the second woman in Europe to hold a position as a university professor, although she never actually held it.

In the last years of his life, with his brothers grown up, he was finally free to adopt a reclusive way of life, compatible with his temperament, living in a convent and dedicating himself to religion and philanthropy. She died poor and was buried in a common grave.

Laura Bassi’s (1711–1778) talent was also recognized early on by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XVI, who became her patron. At the age of 21, she was appointed professor of anatomy and, two years later, she also began teaching philosophy, always in Bologna.

She was paid a salary, but because women were expected to behave discreetly, she had to do most of her schooling at home. Even so, the university did not fail to take advantage of the symbolism of his presence, which had political value. She married in 1738 the physician Giuseppe Veratti, with whom she had between 8 and 12 children.

In 1772, the professor of experimental physics whose assistant was Veratti died. Incredibly, the university chose Laura to succeed him, keeping her husband as an assistant. Weakened by multiple pregnancies, she died shortly afterwards.

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