x PREFACE 



began to realize, as never before, that women of intellectual 

 eminence have received too little credit for their contributions 

 to the progress of knowledge, and should have a sympathetic 

 historian of what they have achieved in the domain of learning. 



But it was not until after I had visited the great university 

 towns of Bologna, Padua and Pavia, had become more familiar 

 with their fascinating histories and traditions, and surveyed 

 there the scenes of the great scholastic triumphs of women as 

 students and professors, that I fully realized the importance, if 

 not the necessity, of such a work as I had in contemplation. 

 For then, as when standing in silent meditation on the pronaos 

 of the Parthenon, the past seemed to become present, and the 

 graceful figures of those illustrious daughters of Italia la Bella, 

 who have conferred such honor on both their country and on 

 womankind throughout the world, seemed to flit before me as 

 they returned to and from their lecture halls and laboratories, 

 where their discourses, in flowing Latin periods, had commanded 

 the admiration and the applause of students from every Euro- 

 pean country, from the Rock of Cashel to the Athenian 

 Acropolis. 



Only then did the magnitude and the difficulty of my self- 

 imposed task begin to dawn upon me. I saw that it would be 

 impossible, if I were to do justice to the subject, to compass in 

 a single volume anything like an adequate account of the contri- 

 butions of women to the advancement of general knowledge. I 

 accordingly resolved to restrict my theme and confine myself to 

 an attempt to show what an important role women have played 

 in the development of those branches of knowledge in which 

 they are usually thought to have had but little part. 



The subject of my book thus, by a process of elimination, 

 narrowed its scope to woman's achievements in science. Many 

 works in various languages had been written on what women 

 had accomplished in art, literature, and statecraft, and there 

 was, therefore, no special call for a new volume on any of these 

 topics. But, with the exception of a few brief monographs in 

 German, French and Italian, and an occasional magazine 

 article here and there, practically nothing had been written 

 about woman in science. The time, then, seemed opportune for 

 entering upon a field that had thus far been almost completely 



