Maria Gaetana Agnesi Melissa De La Cruz

Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s life

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born on May 16, 1718. She also died on January 9, 1799. She was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian.

Her father, Pietro Agnesi, was either said to be a wealthy silk merchant or a mathematics professor. Regardless, he was well to do and lived a social climber. He married Anna Fortunata Brivio, but had a total of 21 children with 3 female relations. He used his kids to be known with the Milanese socialites of the time and Maria Gaetana Agnesi was his oldest. He hosted soires and used his kids as entertainment. Maria’s sisters would perform the musical acts while she would present Latin debates and orations on questions of natural philosophy. The family was well to do and Pietro has to make sure his children were under the best training to entertain well at these parties. For Maria, that meant well-esteemed tutors would be given because her father discovered her great potential for an advanced intellect. Her education included the usual languages and arts; she spoke Italian and French at the age of 5 and but the age of 11, she also knew how to speak Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin. Historians have given her the name of the Seven-Tongued Orator. With private tutoring, she was also taught topics such as mathematics and natural philosophy, which was unusual for women at that time.

With the Agnesi family living in Milan, Italy, Maria’s family practiced religion seriously. Maria was given a Catholic catechism that was just as rigorous as her other subjects. Historians have said that in the eighteenth- century, Milan had a Catholic Enlightenment. This centered around the unification of Catholics who were devoted to established progressive theological currents and those who were devoted to progressive social and political reform. At a young age, science and religion were intertwined and this influence is strongly seen throughout Maria’s life. This is also mirrors the birth of infinitesimal calculus in Europe prior to Maria Agnesi’s life. Agnesi saw this type of calculus as a bridge between fallen man and a transcendent God. She believed that the pursuit of advanced mathematics had a deep religious justification just as the Oratorian religious society once did.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s mathematical works

The ”witch of Agnesi” is a curve studied by Maria Agnesi in 1748 in her book Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della giovent italiana (the first surviving mathematical work written by a woman). The curve is also known as cubique d’Agnesi or agnsienne, and had been studied earlier by Fermat and Guido Grandi in 1703. The name ”witch” derives from a mistranslation of the term averisera (”versed sine curve,” from the Latin vertere, ”to turn”) in the original work as avversiera (”witch” or ”wife of the devil”) in an 1801 translation of the work by Cambridge Lucasian Professor of Mathematics John Colson (Gray).

She also wrote the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was member of the faculty at the University of Bologna as a mathematics professor, though she didnt serve. The treatise was called, ”Instituzioni analitiche as uso della giovent italiana”. Mathematicians have said that it is the best introduction exant to the works of Euler. She recognized some mistakes in l’Hopital’s textbook of differential calculus in 1696. She aided by Monk Ramior Rampinelli who connected her to other mathematicians that would be able to help her with her new discovery. He encouraged Agnesi’s research and in the end, she was able to produce a book. In this book, it is evident that she studied pure mathematics and went against applied math that could be used as a tool in science. She would spurn any motivation for infinitesimal analysis. People questioned her choices and historians are shocked by her choice. She justified that the vastness and uncertainty of mathematics was because of our limited knowledge as humans compared to God’s. The study of infinitesimal analysis did not have the same intention of religious reason that just calculus had.

She was only seen as an amateur mathematician because she was still active in her social obligations and family while she was doing her research. This was opposite from Italy’s other learned women such as Countess Clelia Borromeo del Grillo (who founded her own scientific academy prior to Agnesi’s time) and Laura Bassi (who became the first female physics professor at a European university). Some may argue that Agnesis career doesn’t deem value because she did not have a theorem or conjecture, but he life was an example of how science, specifically mathematics, can be discovered and studied in harmony with the religion of Roman Catholicism. She was a devout Catholic that used mathematics as a vehicle to fulfill her religious vocation.

Collaboration with other scholars

Maria was a shy person and did not like to be in the public.

Maria Agnesi was asked for her opinion on Joseph-Louis Lagrange’s works, but she just said that she was no longer concerned with things like mathematics. She then retired to becoming the director of an institute that was a home for the ill and infirm.

Historical events that marked Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s life.

Her mother’s death was a turning point in Agnesi’s life. This gave her an excuse to drop all her research and just pursue a life of religion and charity. She retired from all her mathermatical works and founded a hotel, an albergo, for the sick.

Significant historical events around the world during Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s life

Events that were significant were the ”Catholic Enlightenment” in Milan while she was alive. Prior to Agnesi’s life, the birth of calculus was important.

Significant mathematical progress during then Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s lifetime

LaGrange articles on the calculus of variations

Connections between history and the development of mathematics

Mathematical research was just beginning when Agnesi began her work around 1740. The Republic of Letters served as a guideline to all mathematicians at the time. Differential and integral calculus started with Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz around 1680. It spread not only through academic works such as journals and universities, but also through religion and clerics. Religion played a part in both men’s lives. If Newton did not pull some strings with clerics, he would have to be ordained an Anglican priest because of his professor holding at Cambridge. For Leibniz, he used a Latin periodical, Acta Eruditorim to publish he discovery of calculus because it reached the masses with its usual articles on theological controversy and such. He then contacted Johann Bernoulli and Bernoulli helped spread the idea to France. Bernoulli shared this new idea of calculus to Oratorian priest Father Nicolas Malebranche and aristocrat, Marquis de l’Hopital. The ball started rolling and many outcomes occurred such as Malebranche circle member, Louis Carre, publishing the first textbook on integral calculus in 1702. Other people such as Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle became a

2 dedicated student of calculus and the Jesuit society in France also became interested in calculus.

Remarks

References

1. https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/agnesi.htm/

2. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WitchofAgnesi.html

3. The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God. Massimo Mazzotti. J.B. Shank. John Hopkins University. 2007.

4. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Gaetana-Agnesi

3