Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s amazing life
Best known the the First Lady of Mathematics, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was a trailblazer in the world of numbers by making waves in the field in a time when men dominated.
She had a very privileged upbringing, with a series of tutors teaching her Latin, Hebrew, Greek and a number of other languages. However, it was maths that caught her attention and she wrote her seminal work ‘Instituzioni analitiche ad iso della gioventu italiana (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth), which was two massive volumes of algebra.
These books proposed the mathematical process of differential calculus and integrals, as well as introducing the Agnesi curve, which is a planar cubic curve.
Her work with algebra cemented her place in history and secured her that valuable Google Doodle