SKETCH OF MARIA AGNESI. 403 



SKETCH OF MAEIA AGKESI. 



By M. JACQUES BOYEE. 



TO assert that women have had an important influence on the 

 progress of science would certainly be exaggeration; but to say 

 that they have always been wholly foreign to it would be still more 

 inexact. The female sex have, in fact, been for many centuries con- 

 tributing to the extension of the field of scientific knowledge; and 

 now that they are beginning to take a more prominent part in affairs 

 of this category it seems a favorable time to review some of their 

 achievements, and to notice some of the women whose scientific 

 accomplishments have been most remarkable. 



We begin with a Milanese mathematician of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury — Maria Agnesi, a woman who was unique among the few who 

 have occupied themselves with the exact sciences. Her precocious 

 intelligence and a prodigious memory, which permitted her to ex- 

 press herself correctly in seven languages, and her rare aptitude for 

 one of the most arduous branches of mathematics — the infinitesimal 

 analysis of which Leibnitz and ISTewton had only just indicated the 

 formulas — the saintliness of her life, divided between study, prayer, 

 and charitable works — all contribute to make her one of the most 

 agreeable characters which the scientific history of the last century 

 offers us. 



This illustrious learned lady was born in Milan, May 16, 1Y18.* 

 Her father, Dom Pietro Agnesi Mariami, was a royal feudatory of 

 Monteveglia, and her mother was named Anna Brivia. Baptized 

 on the 23d of May in the basilica of Santo Nazzaro il Maggiore, she 

 was given the name of Margaretta Gaetana Maria. She showed 

 marked aptitude for languages from a very early age. She spoke 

 French well when five years old, as we learn from the following 

 sonnet by a friend of her father's: " At that age which retains only 

 the first forms of the language of her country, and which is still 

 easily fatigued by the task, a pretty little girl uses the French 

 idiom with such grace and ease that a nymph on the banks of the 

 Seine could not speak in a sweeter and more pleasant manner. It 

 seems as if Time was afraid his flight could not keep up with the 



* In the lEloge historiqiie de Maria Gaetano Agnesi, demoiselle celfebre par ses grands 

 talens dans les math6matiques, par se piet6 et sa bienfaisance, ouvrage tradnit de I'ltalien 

 de Frisi (Paris, ISOT, 8vo, p. 5), she is said to have been born March 16, 1718, but that is 

 a typographical error. We should read May. This work, composed from the archives of 

 the Agnesi family, is otherwise very exact, and a large number of the facts that follow 

 have been derived from it. It is needless to add that the general dictionaries, including 

 even the Biographic Universelle de Michaud (new edition, 1843, vol. i, p. 233), have rejected 

 Frisi's error. 



