196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the most gifted women tlie world has ever seen. Laura Caterina 

 Bassi was born at Bologna, October 31, 1711. She was the daughter 

 of a distinguished lawyer and litterateur, and at a tender age manifested 

 extraordinary precocity, being able while still a child to translate flu- 

 ently most difficult Latin and Greek. Encouraged by her father, she 

 pursued her studies under the guidance of eminent masters ; she leai'ned 

 physiology and medicine with the erudite physician Gaetano Tacconi, 

 mathematics with Manfredi, and natural philosophy with the disciples 

 of Gassendi, and she astonished these profound philosophers by her 

 talents. Laura Bassi studied for the pure love of knowledge, and had 

 no ambition to seek public honors, but, to gratify the pardonable pride 

 of a father as well as the earnest desires of her instructors, she con- 

 sented to support a philosophical thesis before a learned audience of 

 professors. This event took place on the ITth of April, 1732, before 

 she had reached the age of twenty-one years. The occasion was made 

 one of festivity by the whole city, who turned out to do her honor ; 

 the assemblage was presided over by two cardinals, Lambertini, after- 

 ward Pope Benedict XIV, and Grimaldi. 



According to custom her thesis was opposed by seven learned men ; 

 to these she replied in elegant Latin with great success and amid the 

 applause of the distinguished audience. A month later the degree of 

 Doctor was conferred upon her, and she was honored by a position in 

 the Faculty of Philosophy. The Senate subsequently bestowed upon 

 her the chair of Physics, and commemorated the event by striking a 

 medal which bore her own portrait. She held the professorship 

 twenty-eight years with marked success, paying particular attention to 

 mathematics and physics, also to helles-lettres. Several academies of 

 learning elected her to membership. In 1738 she was married to J. J. 

 Veratti, a physician, and became in the course of time the mother of 

 twelve children. A learned French litterateur who visited Bologna in 

 her day thus describes her appearance : " Laura Bassi has a counte- 

 nance slightly marked with sraall-pox, but of a sweet and modest ex- 

 pression ; her black eyes are sparkling, yet tranquil, and she is serious 

 and composed in demeanor without affectation or vanity. Her memory 

 is tenacious, her judgment sound, and her imagination active." She 

 died in the year 1778, at the age of sixty-seven. 



Laura Bassi does not seem to have pursued medical studies, and cer- 

 tainly never engaged in practice ; but any account of the gifted women 

 of Bologna who labored in this direction would be incomplete without 

 a brief notice of Madame Veratti. 



Contemporary with this interesting woman lived another, less gifted 

 but scarcely less renowned. Anna Morandi was born at Bologna five 

 years later than Laura Bassi, and died four years earlier. She became 

 the wife of Giovanni Manzolini, a poor, hard-working maker of ana- 

 tomical models. Manzolini was an expert painter and modeler in wax, 

 and was emj^loyed by one Lelli to construct a series of anatomical 



