Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (16 May 1718 to 9 January 1799) was a Milanese mathematician, philosopher, theologian and humanitarian. Born in Milan into a wealthy and literate family, she was a child prodigy who spoke Italian and French at five and had learned several further languages by eleven. After reading the Marquis de l'Hopital's treatise on conic sections she was introduced to the calculus in 1740 by the Olivetan monk Ramiro Rampinelli. Her main work, the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana, published in Milan in 1748, is credited as the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was regarded as the best introduction extant to the works of Euler. In it she treated the curve later known in English as the Witch of Agnesi. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, and in 1750 Pope Benedict XIV appointed her to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at Bologna, though she never served. After her father died in 1752 she gave her last decades to theology and to caring for the poor and sick of Milan.