Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/527

Rh J. J. Veratti, and became the mother of twelve children. She is spoken of as an excellent housekeeper, a judicious mother, charitable and most earnest in good works. Two years before her death she was appointed professor of physics at the university. Her personal appearance is thus described by a contemporary writer: "Laura Bassi has a countenance slightly marked by smallpox, but of a sweet and tranquil expression; her black eyes are sparkling, and she is serious and composed in manner without affectation or vanity."

Even more remarkable seem to have been the attainments of Maria Agnesi, born in 1718. She was one of the twenty-three children of a rich citizen, who must have needed all his wealth to bring up such a family. One of her sisters was noted as a musician, and was the author of three operas. Maria has been called the oracle of seven languages, speaking French fluently at the age of four, and early becoming proficient in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, as well as German and Spanish. After spending her youth in the study of philosophy and philology, at the desire of her father, she devoted herself to mathematics, in which she attained such celebrity that she was complimented by Pope Benedict IV, who nominated her as professor of mathematics in the University of Bologna, a position she held for several years. At the death of her father she abandoned her chair and her studies to fulfill a long-felt desire for a religious life. She entered the Blue Sisterhood of Bologna, and spent the remainder of her long life in works of mercy and charity, gaining the name of the "servant of the poor." Her portrait and the contemporary accounts of her appearance show her to have possessed much beauty; in character she is said to have been modest, gentle, and almost timid.

Less gifted than these two women, but equally renowned, and whose knowledge has been of far greater practical value, was Anna Moranda Manzolini, a woman of humble origin, and the wife of a poor maker of anatomical models. Beginning as an assistant to her husband, she soon surpassed him in knowledge of his profession, and being encouraged by a friendly physician, she began to give lectures on anatomy. So great was her skill in dissection, and so clear were her demonstrations, that she soon acquired a European reputation, and her lecture room was thronged with students of all nationalities. After the death of her husband she accepted the professorship of anatomy at the University of Bologna, where her collection of anatomical models still bears silent testimony to her remarkable skill and accurate knowledge of the human frame.

Turning to France, we find at this period the Marquise de Châtelet, the friend of Voltaire, a woman "without faith, without manners, and without modesty," but deservedly famous as a