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| Laura Bassi, linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2026, on 10.75" x 13.75" Japanese paper with deckle edge |
The third Printer Solstice prompt is one, so I have selected a woman in science who was often the first, number one.
The first woman to earn a doctorate in science was physicist and professor Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti (née, and known throughout her life as Bassi, 1711-1778). She was the second woman be a Doctor of Philosophy (after her countrywoman, philosopher Elena Cornaro Pisccopia in 1648), and when employed by the University of Bologna, became the first salaried female university instructor. Eventually she was their highest paid employee. She was the first woman admitted to the Bologna Academy of Sciences, one of Italy's leading academies. She was instrumental in spreading Newtonian physics to Italy through her outstanding teaching, her experimental research and wide correspondence with natural philosophers. She was called and depicted as Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna at age 21. Her high profile brought attracted visitors from across Europe, to learn from her. She was not satisfied being a mere symbol, perceived as the 'marvel of her sex' who augmented the fame of Bologna. She was tenacious in pushing against the bounds placed on her as a woman, to gain the freedom to pursue her passion for physics, to teach and to research like her male peers.
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| Laura Bassi illustration showing the first dispute sustained by Laura on 23rd Feb 1734 inside the Archiginnasio Anatomical Theatre, she is the figure in black. (via here) |
Born to lawyer Giuseppe Bassi and wife Maria Rosa Cesari, Laura was her parents' only surviving child. Bologna was called "a paradise for women" because of a history of successful women in otherwise male professions. Laura was privately educated by her cousin Father Lorenzo Stegani. He taught her not only to read but to write and speak Latin, as well as French and mathematics from the age of 5. Laura was able to lecture and publish in Latin throughout her career. Her mother was often ill so the family doctor, Gaetano Tacconi, a professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, was a frequent visitor, who noticed Laura was studious, bright and had a facility for Latin. From age 13 to 20 she was also taught anatomy, natural history, logic, metaphysics, philosophy, chemistry, hydraulics, mechanics, algebra, geometry, ancient Greek, Latin, French, and Italian by Tacconi. He wanted to teach her the uncontroversial Cartesian science but Laura's imagination was captured by the new Newtonian physics when he added Newton's Optics to her readings. Rather than Descartes' belief in deriving knowledge through rational principles, Bassi was attracted to the Newtonian approach of deducing laws of nature through observation. Tacconi invited his colleagues and fellow members of the academy to the Bassi home to debate Laura. Her intellect was noticed. She found a patron in Prospero Lorenzini Lambertini, who became Archbishop of Bologna in 1731 and then later Pope Benedict XIV. A supporter of both the education of women and of sciences in general, he wished to forge an alliance between science and faith and was an important and powerful patron. His arrival was timely; Tacconi was trying to steer her to studying ethics but with Lambertini's support she was able to pursue her own interest in physics.
In 1732, when Laura was 20, Lambertini arranged for Laura to have a public debate with four professors. She defended her forty-nine theses on Philosophica Studia at the Sala degli Anziani of the Palazzo Publico on April 17. The University of Bologna awarded her a doctorate, the first woman with a doctorate in science. June 27 she defended a further 12 theses on subjects like chemistry, hydraulics, refrangibility (optics), mathematics, physics, mechanics and methodology at the Archiginnasio, the main university building, in a bid to get the university senate to award her a teaching position. The University held that women should lead private lives so she remained more constrained than her male peers, typically only giving a single yearly public lecture and composing poetry for public events. She was treated as a prodigy and a novelty, but she wanted to have the same treatment as the men. When she reached 24 in 1735 she obtained Vatican permission, like her male peers, to access forbidden books including those by Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Bacon and was finally able to study infinitesimal calculus. Her request to access these books did shock many. Realizing her education had been deficient in advanced mathematics, she began studying higher mathematics and Newton's physics with mathematician Gabriele Manfredi (whose own sisters Teresa and Maddelena both studied astronomy, mathematics and Latin and taught in their home). She also became an apprentice to Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari, professor of experimental physics and chemistry. By improving her skills she hoped to be allowed to teach regularly.
Six years later in 1738 she married Doctor Guiseppe Verrati, a very progressive lecturer in medicine at the University of Bologna especially interested in the therapeutic use of electricity. She was criticized for marrying as pursuing her role as wife and mother rather than learning, blemishing her role a virginal "Minerva," but as an unmarried woman spending time with men to teach or learn had made her the focus of gossip. She wrote, "I have chosen a person who walks the same path of learning, and who, from long experience, I was certain would not dissuade me from it." Verrati became an affectionate and loyal ally in her bid to be allowed a greater role as scientist and professor and they collaborated for decades. Through her marriage she was allowed some more freedom to appear publicly than an unmarried woman, and with her husband she was able to share a laboratory in her home and really pursue experimental physics. Unusually for the time, she did not need to rely on him for her education as her knowledge of mathematics and literature exceeded his own, and this resulted in a marriage of equals between two scientists. But the flip side was the toll that motherhood took on her health. They had at least eight children, five of who survived infancy. Further, the public disapproved as lecturers were not supposed to marry, but in reality, Bassi was only really able to lecture regularly after her marriage.
In 1739 Lambertini and Flamino Scarselli, secretary to the Bolognese ambassador to the papal court, supported her plea for normal teaching duties. The University denied her request but allowed her to give private lessons. In 1745 Lambertini, who had become Pope Benedict XIV formed an elite group of 25 scholars called the Beneditti (named after himself). Bassi argued hard that she should be included but the men had mixed reactions. Lambertini made her an additional member but denied her the voting rights of the men. Though, like the men, she was expected to submit a yearly paper to the pope; she submitted On the compression of air (1746), On the bubbles observed in free flowing liquids (1747), and On bubbles of air that escape from fluids (1748). Because of Bassi, the Bologna Academy also started admitted other women, at least as honorary members, including French physicist Émilie du Châtelet in 1746 and Milanese mathematician Maria Gaetana Agneissi in 1748, long before other scientific academies. In 1749 she opened a school in her home including 8 months of daily lessons and hands-on experiments, which was more in-depth than the natural history taught at the university or the weekly demonstrations at the Bologna Institute.
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Laura Maria Caterina Bassi. Lithograph by A. di Lorenzo via JSTOR |
In 1755 she complained to Francisco Scarselli, "As for my physical experiments, and in view of the fact that the continual expense that arises requires some form of assistance if I am to advance and perfect them, I am almost in despair," though she was at the time tied for the highest salary at the university. The university granted her funds for experiments performed in her home in 1759, recognizing the importance and utility of her work. Thus she was allowed to follow her research interests outside of the University's constraints. Meanwhile they wanted to use her position for public relations and required her to attend public events like the annual public dissection called The Carnival Anatomy, which she attended from 1734 onwards. From the 1760s, she and her husband performed experiments in electricity and natural philosophy and hosted a lively salon in their home lab, attracting researchers like Abbé Nollett to Bologna to study. Her primary interests, Newtonian physics and Franklinian electricity were not even on the university curriculum, but Bassi taught courses on these subjects for 28 years in her home, and she was a key figure in introducing Italy to Newton's physics. She wrote 28 papers on physics and hydraulics, 4 of which were printed. Sadly, the vast majority of her unpublished work was lost during the Napoleonic era. She also taught students studying for the priesthood experimental physics at the Collegio Montalto from 1766-1778. She corresponded with the the luminaries of science and philosophy, in Italy and surrounding nations, including experts in electricity like Nollet and Volta, and Voltaire in France who wrote, "There is no Bassi in London, and I would be much happier to be added to your Academy of Bologna than that of the English, even though it has produced a Newton." Her home became a stop on the Grand Tour of for any scientists visiting Italy.
In 1772, professor of experimental physics, to whom her husband served as assistant, Paolo Balbi died quite suddenly. Bassi made the case that she could take on his mantle, and in 1776, at age 65, she was appointed Chair of Experimental Physics, with her husband as her assistant.
She died in 1778 at 66 likely of a heart attack, her deteriorating health attributed to all her pregnancies and childbirth complications. Silver laurels were placed on her head at her funeral and she was interred by the tomb of fellow scientist and investigator of electrical phenomena and her student, Luigi Galvani. Her husband took over her professorship after her death and their youngest son Paolo followed the his parents' lead and became a physician and an experimental physicist too. Her example helped inspire the next generations of women scholars across Europe and beyond, over the last 250 years.
References
Cavazza, Marta. Laura Bassi and Giuseppi Veratti: an electric couple during the Enlightenment. Contributions to Science, 5 (1), 115-128 (2009) Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Barcelona. DOI: 10.2436/20.7010.01.67
Cavazza, Marta. The Biographies of Laura Bassi in Writing about Lives in Science (Auto)Biography, Gender, and Genre. pp. 67-87. Paola Govoni and Zelda Alice Frnaceschi (eds.) V & R unipress. ISBN: 978-8471-0263-2. 2014.
Cifarelli, Luisa and Miriam Focaccia. Laura Bassi - Emblem and Primacy of Settecento science. Physics News, Bulletin of the Indian Physics Association, Vol. 51 (3), July-September, 2021
Findlen, Paula. Laura Bassi and the City of Learning. Physics World, August 29, 2013
Findlen, Paula. Science as a career in Enlightenment Italy - The Strategies of Laura Bassi. Isis, 84: 441-469. The History of Science Society. 1993.
Focaccia, Miriam, Laura Bassi - the world's first female university chair, Archivi della Scienzia, accessed December 2025
HLB, Laura Bassi Scientist, Intriguing History, July 12, 2016.
Laura Bassi, Wikipedia, accessed December, 2025
Museo Galileo - Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Piazza dei Giudici 1- 50122, Florence, Italy.
O'Connor, J J and E F Robertson. Laura Maria Catarina Bassi, MacTutor, December 2021.
The Bassi-Veratti Collection, Stanford University Libraries, accessed December, 2025.
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu6UdSXpaDY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhLcVLp_8sU
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