Maria GaÐ"«Tana Agnesi

Although there are many famous mathematicians that I do not know of, Maria GaÐ"«tana Agnesi is an important mathematician of the Renaissance period.

Born on May 16, 1718, Maria was the oldest of twenty one. “She was the daughter of Pietro Agnesi who came from a wealthy family who made their money from silk.”(O’Connor and Robertson) Recognized as a child prodigy, early, Maria’s father made sure to provide the finest tutors for his daughter.

All of Maria’s tutors were men educated by the Church, which meant, at the time, the best education a person could get. By the age of five, Maria could speak both French and Italian and by the age of nine she mastered Latin and acquired Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, and German by age thirteen. By the time Maria was fifteen; her house became a regular meeting place for the most educated men of Bologne.

Maria would participate in the meetings and would find herself engaged in abstract philosophical and mathematical discussions. Although the meetings did not appeal to her, due to the fact that she was shy, she continued attending to meetings in order to please her father. But when her mother died, she decided not to attend the meetings and told her father that she had to take care of her twenty siblings because finding a housekeeper to care for twenty children and a lonely man would be costly. Unfortunately, all this pressure would lead to her giving up mathematics altogether.

By 1738, “she published a collection of complex essays on natural science and philosophy called Propositions Philosophicae, based on the discussions of the intellectuals who gathered at her father's home.”(Unlu) Later, she began working on her most important publication, Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventÐ"â„- italiana, or Analytical Institutions, which deal with differential and integral calculus. “It is said that she started writing Analytical Institutions as a textbook for her brothers, which then grew into a more serious effort”(Unlu) In 1748, Analytical Institutions was published causing a positive uproar in the scholastic world because it was one of the first and most thorough works on finite and infinitesimal analysis. “Maria's great contribution to mathematics with this book was that it brought the works of various mathematicians together in a very systematic way with her own interpretations. The book became a model of clarity; it was widely translated and used as a textbook.”(Unlu) In this book, Maria taught her infamous curve “witch of Agnesi”.

Many do not understand why the curve is called вЂ?witch’. But in 1718, Grandi gave the curve the Latin name вЂ?versoria’ meaning вЂ?rope that turns a sail’. Grandi then gave the Italian вЂ?versiera’ for the Latin вЂ?versoria’ and Agnesi correctly describes in her book that the curve was called вЂ?la versiera’. But John Colson translated Analytical Institutions into English and confused вЂ?la versiera’ for вЂ?l’aversiera’ which means вЂ?witch’ or вЂ?she-devil’, thus creating “witch of Agnesi”.

After the