Agnesi

Agnesi, MARIA GAETANA, a woman remarkable for her varied attainments, was born at Milan in 1718. In her ninth year she could converse in Latin, and soon acquired a mastery of Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and German. Her father invited parties of learned men to his house, with whom, in spite of her retiring disposition, Maria disputed on philosophical points. Of her discourses on these occasions, her father published specimens, called Propositiones Philosophicæ (1738). After her twentieth year, she devoted herself to the study of mathematics, wrote an unpublished treatise on Conic Sections, and published her Institutioni Analitiche (1748). The latter was a work of permanent value, and was translated into French and English. When her father was disabled by infirmity, she took his place as professor of Mathematics in the university of Bologna, by the appointment of Pope Benedict XIV. After her father's death in 1752, she made theology her study, and ultimately entered a convent at Milan, where in 1799 she died at the good old age of 81.