210 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



persons in Europe are able to write Greek as well as she 

 does, and not more than fifteen are able to understand 

 her." 



Burckhardt, in his thoughtful work on the culture of the 

 Italian Renaissance, has a paragraph which expresses, in a 

 few words, what was always the attitude of the Italian 

 father toward the education of his daughter. 



"The education of the woman of the upper class was 

 absolutely the same as that of the man. The Italian of the 

 Renaissance did not for a moment hesitate to give his son 

 and daughter the same literary and philosophical training. 

 He considered the knowledge of the works of antiquity 

 life's greatest good, and he could not, therefore, deny to 

 woman participation in such knowledge. Hence the per- 

 fection attained by the daughters of noble families in writ- 

 ing and speaking Latin." 1 



This attitude of the members of the nobility toward the 

 education of their daughters was essentially the same as 

 that of the universities of Italy toward women who had a 

 thirst for knowledge. For from the dawn of learning in 

 Salerno to the present there never was a time when women 

 were not as cordially welcomed to the universities as stu- 

 dents and professors as were the men; and never a time 

 when the merit of intellectual work was not determined 

 without regard to sex. 



In Bologna, where were passed the sixty-seven years of 

 her mortal life, the name of Laura Bassi, like that of her 

 illustrious colleague, Luigi Galvani, is one to conjure with, 

 and a name that is still pronounced with respect and rever- 

 ence. Her last resting place is in the Church of Corpus 

 Domini, the same sacred shrine in which were deposited all 

 that was mortal of the renowned discoverer of galvanic elec- 

 tricity. 2 



1 Die Cultur tier "Renaissance in Italien, Vol. I, p. 363, 1869. 



2 As no satisfactory biography of Laura Bassi has yet been writ- 

 ten, most of our knowledge respecting her is limited to that found 



