May 16 - Happy Birthday, Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Posted on May 16, 2021

Key Points

This is an update of my post published May 16, 2010:

Born on this day in 1718, in Milan, Italy, Maria Gaetana Agnesi is the first woman in the Western world considered to be an important mathematician since Ancient Greece’s Hypatia, back in the 5th Century.

Agnesi was also a philosopher and a linguist.

Agnesi was a child prodigy. At age 9, she wrote a one-hour speech (in Latin) on the right of women to be educated, and she delivered it to an academic group. By 13 she was considered a “Walking Polyglot” because she knew French, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, Latin, and of course her native Italian. From age 15 to 20, her father organized meetings at their house: the most learned men in Bologna would come, and the teenage Agnesi would read and argue philosophical questions. However, she didn’t really want to participate in these events, and at 20 she put a stop to them.

Google’s celebration of Agnesi might look weird –
like, what’s with the lines? – but the image harkens
back to one of Agnesi’s diagrams:

Agnesi was considered dazzingly beautiful. She wanted to enter a convent and just study, but her father asked her to continue to teach her younger siblings. (Maria’s mother had died, and her father married two more times.) All told, Maria was the oldest of her father’s 21 children, so teaching all of them took a lot of her time.

Agnesi’s biggest contribution to mathematics was a two-volume book on differential and integral calculus that brought together in a systematic way the work of several different mathematicians, with her own analysis and interpretations. When it was published in 1748, Analytical Institutions made an academic sensation.
Agnesi also became a university professor (Wikipedia claims she is the first woman university professor). She eventually joined a convent and helped the poor, homeless, and sick.

Agnesi wrote about calculus.
You may be thinking, “What is calculus, anyway?”

Watch this very short video to find out!

Play Around with Math!

This English version of a Dutch website has tons of really interesting math puzzles and games. I loved looking at the Impossible Object (rotate it around to see the illusion), and I played Colouring Sides 1 (fun!) and Falling Sums (also good).

Click Math Arcade on the FunBrain website for some math “video games.”