By RAY CAVANAUGH
The math professor occupation is largely male even today. But back in 1750, when Maria Gaetana Agnesi was appointed as a mathematics professor at the University of Bologna, women in such a position were nonexistent. And yet Agnesi avoided what would’ve been a groundbreaking academic career, electing instead to focus on charitable works. This May 16 marks the 300th anniversary of her birth.
Born in the northern Italian city of Milan, she entered a large and prosperous family. Her father, Pietro Agnesi, was a silk merchant. Some accounts say that he was also a mathematics professor, though other sources dispute this piece of information. Either way, he noticed something special in the intellectual gifts of his daughter Maria Gaetana and obtained for her the best possible tutors. While still a child, her fluency in several languages earned her the nickname “Seven-Tongued Orator.”
Despite her talents, she was troubled and began suffering from a condition that today would almost surely receive a psychiatric diagnosis. Her mother’s death in 1732 aggravated this condition, and there was evidence that the girl engaged in self-harm and might even have attempted suicide, according to Massimo Mazzotti’s book The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God.
But she made it through this troubled period and began showing a particular aptitude for mathematics. The Dictionary of Scientific Biography reports that she received advanced instruction from a Fr. Ramiro Rampinelli, who was both a Benedictine priest and a math professor.
Throughout Maria’s adolescence, Agnesi’s father was fond of hosting soirees at their home, where he would showcase his prized daughter’s talents. A collection of her discussions at these events saw publication in 1738 as the volume Propositions of Philosophy.
Soon after this book appeared, Agnesi told her father that she wanted to become a nun. The father was not opposed to his children joining a religious order; at least four of his daughters would enter the convent. However, the ultra-brainy Maria Gaetana was his crown jewel with which he could dazzle members of Milan’s high society. And so he was unwilling to give her away.
The father and daughter reached an agreement that she would remain at the family home as a layperson but she would also get to lead a more reclusive life and be exempted from having to attend balls, the theatre, and other events popular with upper-class Milanese. Also, her days as a one-woman talent show were to end.
Liberated from unwanted activities, Agnesi devoted her talents to the composition of her Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth. Published in two volumes in 1748, this work explored algebra and calculus and included such items as a cubic curve — now known as the Agnesi curve and often referred to as the “Witch of Agnesi,” owing to confusion in the Italian-to-English translation.
Upon the publication of her Analytical Institutions, Agnesi became a celebrity of sorts. The French Academy of Sciences considered her book “the most complete and best written work of its kind.” Though algebra had been around for centuries, calculus was then a relatively new subject. In fact, no one else in Milan, male or female, had previously undertaken to learn it.
To reward her achievement, Pope Benedict XIV sent her a letter of personal congratulation along with a gold medal. And in 1750, the Pontiff appointed her to a math professorship at the University of Bologna.
Agnesi accepted this appointment but only as an honorary position. For the next two years, she was busy attending to her ailing father. She never actually worked as a math professor, and there is no evidence that she engaged in serious mathematical pursuits subsequent to her father’s death in April 1752, at which point she seemed more concerned about making sure that her younger relatives received a solid education.
Though she never became a nun, she never married either and instead devoted her time to running the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, a house for Milan’s indigent elderly, where she worked pro bono and where she eventually resided.
Despite her benevolent nature, she was unafraid to deliver criticism and at one point had to deal sternly with a surgeon whose incompetence was killing the patients. She was also respected for her compassionate treatment of a deranged woman who often attacked staff and fellow patients because she thought they were attempting to steal her religious icons.
Consistent with her modest persona, Agnesi kept turning down offers to sit for portraits. So, in order to capture her likeness, a sculptor surreptitiously entered her building and made hasty sketches of her as she worked.
Agnesi continued to live at her workplace until dying of pneumonia at age 80 on January 9, 1799. At that time, Milan was a place of considerable political upheaval, and it was decided that a public ceremony was too risky. So, following a discreet funeral Mass, she was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
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