WOMEN IN PHYSICS 209 



A learned French traveler who visited Laura in Bologna 

 describes her as having a face that was sweet, serious and 

 modest. Her eyes were dark and sparkling, and she was 

 blessed with a powerful memory, a solid judgment, and a 

 ready imagination. "She conversed fluently with me in 

 Latin for an hour with grace and precision. She is very 

 proficient in metaphysics ; but she prefers modern physics, 

 particularly that of Newton. ' ' 



How many of our college women of to-day could readily 

 carry on a conversation in Latin, if this were the sole 

 medium of communication, or discuss the philosophy of 

 Plato and Aristotle in the tongue of Cicero, or give public 

 lectures on the physieo-mathematical discoveries of Des- 

 cartes and Newton in what was the universal language of 

 the learned world, even less than a century ago ? 



It must not, however, be inferred from the foregoing 

 statements regarding the great intellectual capacity of 

 Laura Bassi or the enthusiastic demonstrations that were so 

 frequently made in her honor that she was unique in this 

 respect among her countrywomen. Special attention has 

 been called to her as a type of the large number of her 

 sex who, by their learning and culture, graced the courts 

 and honored the universities of her country for full ten 

 centuries. Scarcely had death removed Laura Bassi from 

 a career in which for twenty-eight years she had won the 

 plaudits of the whole of Europe, when the University of 

 Bologna welcomed to its learned halls two other women 

 who, in their respective lines of research, were fully as emi- 

 nent as their departed countrywoman. These were Maria 

 dalle Donne, for whom Napoleon established a chair of 

 obstetrics, and Clotilda Tambroni, the famous professor of 

 Greek, of whom a noted Hellenist declared, "Only three 



Problemate quodam Hydrometrico. Many of her lectures on physics 

 still exist in manuscript, and it is to be hoped that at least the 

 titles of them may be given in a biography of the learned author 

 which has been long desired and long promised. 



