Laura Bassi
1) Her Biography and Main Works:
Italian scientist Laura Maria Caterina Bassi earned a doctorate from the University of Bologna in May 1732, making her only the third woman in history to get that degree from a European university. She was also the first woman to hold the position of professor of physics at a European university. She was the first woman in Europe to receive an official teaching position offer.
She was privately taught and tutored for seven years by Gaetano Tacconi, a university professor of biology, natural history, and medicine, when she was in her teens. She was born in Bologna into a rich family with a lawyer for a father. Cardinal Prospero Lambertini became aware of her and supported her research. At the age of 21, she was awarded the position of professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna. In the same year, she was elected to the Academy of the Institute for Sciences and the following year, she was given the position of chair in philosophy.
After Elena Cornaro Piscopia, who earned a degree in philosophy from a university in 1678, Bassi became the second woman in Europe to do so. Her early teaching experiences were limited to the occasional lecture setting. The fact that her 1732 defense, graduation, and inaugural lecture took place at Bologna’s Palazzo Publico—a venue essential to the city’s governing bodies—gives the events added significance.
Attendees to these events included “Professors and students at the university, as well as the Vice-Legate and Popal Legate, the Archbishop of Bologna, the Gonfaloniere, the Elders, senators, and magistrates, and some of the city’s most important political and religious leaders. “All the ladies of Bologna” and “all the Nobility as well”. The city of Bologna came to honor Bassi’s accomplishments in acquiring and completing her degree. The Senate anticipated that Bassi would show up to numerous functions as a political figure.
She was required to attend the Carnival Anatomy, a public dissection with tickets available to anybody, as it was an essential part of university life and drew attention from numerous foreigners and influential community people. In 1734, she started going to this celebration every year.
She wed Giuseppe Veratti, a fellow professor, in 1738, and they had twelve children together. After that, she was able to regularly lecture from home and petitioned the university for increased responsibility and a greater salary so she could buy her own equipment. She was granted her requests. Pope Benedict XIV was one of her main benefactors.
He advocated for less academic work being censored, as was the case with Galileo, and he promoted female scholars like Agnesi. She spent 28 years teaching courses on Newtonian physics, which was her primary area of interest. She had a significant role in bringing Newton’s theories of physics and natural philosophy to Italy. She also conducted her own physics-related experiments in every field. Bassi conducted individual classes to cover topics like Newtonian physics and Franklinian electricity that were not covered in the academic curriculum. She wrote 28 papers during her lifetime, the most of which were on physics and hydraulics, although she did not produce any books. Only four of her papers were published.
Alessandro Volta, Voltaire, Francesco Algarotti, Roger Boscovich, Charles Bonnet, Jean Antoine Nollet, Giambattista Beccaria, Paolo Frisi, and others who she corresponded with are just a few of the many scientists whose contributions to science have been preserved, despite the fact that the majority of her scientific works have not. “There is no Bassi in London, and I would be much happier to be included to your Academy of Bologna than that of the English, even though it has produced a Newton,” wrote Voltaire in a letter to her at one point. Regarding her graduation celebrations, Francesco Algarotti produced a number of poems.
A select group of 25 intellectuals known as the Benedettini was created in 1745 by Lambertini (now Pope Benedict XIV) (“Benedictines”, named after himself.) Bassi pushed hard to be nominated to this group, but the other professors had conflicting opinions. In the end, Benedict did select her, the only female member of the team. Bassi and her husband collaborated on electrical experimentation during the 1760s.
Abbe Nollet and other talented individuals were drawn to Bologna by this to study electricity. The Bologna Institute of Sciences appointed her in 1776, when she was 65 years old, to the chair in experimental physics, with her husband serving as a teaching assistant. She made physics her life’s work and made significant advancements for women in academia before passing just two years later.
2) Her Contributions in Physics:
Bassi presented her doctoral dissertations for defence on April 17. She made her defence before Lambertini in the town hall rather than the churches of the religious orders as was traditional because she had gained notoriety in Bologna. She cited Isaac Newton’s contributions on optics and light in a number of her theses. The enthusiasm in Bologna over Bassi’s exploits reached its peak on May 12 when she obtained her degree and collections of poetry were produced in her honour. She successfully defended a second set of theses on the characteristics of water on June 27, and as a result, the institution appointed her to an honorary position as a professor of physics.
Bassi offered lectures and practical demonstrations at her house because she was unable to teach at the university as a woman. She was a pioneer of Newtonian physics and based her lectures on the concepts covered in his Principia. Lambertini was elected Pope Benedict XIV in 1740, and in 1745 he restructured the Bologna Academy of Sciences to form the Benedettini, a unique club of 25 scientists who were required to frequently present their work. Bassi pushed Benedict XIV to take the throne as the 25th Benedettini. It was exceedingly divisive for a woman to receive such an honor, but Benedict XIV compromised and named Bassi to the Benedettini without giving her the same voting rights as the other 24.
Bassi and Veratti started conducting tests with potential medical uses for electricity in the 1760s, but she didn’t write any articles about the topic. In 1776, she was given the position of professor of experimental physics at the University of Bologna, and Veratti was designated as her assistant. Bassi became the first woman to be appointed to a physics chair at a university as a result.
3) Her Influence today:
It is only logical to wonder why Bassi’s achievements are so little acknowledged today given her numerous scientific endeavours. One explanation for this is the fact that only four of her papers were published during or after her lifetime. However, the Bologna Academy archives do have a list of the 32 research papers she delivered yearly between 1746 and 1777 as part of her obligations as a Benedictine.
After Bassi’s passing, when people inquired about the publication status of her works, Veratti bemoaned Bassi’s penchant for publishing little and said that this was because she had high standards for her work and did not want to publish them right away. Sadly, during the upheavals of the Napoleonic era, all but one of her unpublished papers vanished. But even in the absence of this information, we must draw the conclusion that Bassi predominantly advanced knowledge through discourse, illustration, experimentation, and explanation.
Although not deserving of a Nobel prize, she achieved the kinds of incremental results that frequently come from far more routine research that are crucial to the ongoing study of science. She emphasises the value of the kind of person who can shed light on existing aspects of science other than one particularly outstanding discovery or insight. Bassi’s love of physics was inspired in part by a society that grew up being fascinated by the new science’s findings. The 18th century saw the advent of a dazzling universe of experiments and equipment that produced frictionless worlds and voids, and appeared to channel the energies of the heavens itself by using mechanical means to produce electricity.
Bassi claimed, however, that conducting experiments without a solid mathematical and philosophical framework was equivalent to knowing only half of what was required to practise physics after Newton. Years after her passing, Spallanzani, an accomplished experimental physiologist, recalled his former instructor with affection. In 1782, he confessed to Veratti, “What little I know, I originally learned from her wise instruction.”
The experimental physics course that Bassi had made famous was continued by her husband and their son Paolo until Paolo’s financial difficulties compelled him to sell the equipment in 1818. A generation of men had the ability to respond, as many of them did when questioned, “I visited Signora Dottoressa Laura Bassi’s school.” well into the 19th century. They were all alums of a single experiment that gave rise to the only female scientist to play this kind of prominent part in the institutionalisation of a brand-new scientific discipline before the 19th century. This was caused in large part by Bassi’s steadfast determination to seize the unnoticed opportunity she was presented with in 1732, when she was hailed by everyone as the only woman (apart from Châtelet) to really comprehend and explain Newton’s physics.
When Bassi passed away in February 1778, her coworkers escorted her coffin in a sad procession to Bologna’s Corpus Domini church. There is still a marble memorial built by her husband and four living sons, which is surrounded on its right by the more impressively gilded monument of Luigi Galvani and his wife Lucia Galeazzi.
Even though the words on this forgotten memorial to one of the most fascinating female scientists of a bygone period are faded from years of feet marching over them, she hasn’t been completely disregarded. Bassi’s portrait is displayed in the University Museum in Bologna at 33 Via Zamboni, where one can also view the 2011 documentary film Laura Bassi, una vita straordinaria: O de l’aurata luce settemplice, which was made in honour of the 300th anniversary of Bassi’s birth and was directed by Enza Negroni and produced by Valeria Consolo.
Her family records are currently accessible online thanks to a digital repository produced by the Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna in association with Stanford University Libraries. These are appropriate honours to an intriguing scientist whose contributions have mostly been forgotten since she published so little.
