Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti (1711 – 1778), an Italian physicist, was the first woman to be named chair of physics at any university.
EARLY LIFE
Laura Bassi was born in Bologna to a wealthy lawyer, Giuseppe Bassi, and his wife Maria Rosa Cesari. Her paternal grandfather, Giacinto Bassi, had run a chemists shop in Bologna, where natural-based medicines were prepared and sold. Laura was her parents’ only surviving child.
They were an enlightened family for the time.. As an only child, Bassi was given an extensive education. Starting at the age of five she was taught by her cousin, Father Lorenzo Stegani, Latin, Frnch, and mathematics. She learned not only to read Latin, but also to speak and write it, later lecturing and publishing in Latin.
Between the age of thirteen to twenty, the family physician, Gaetano Tacconi, taught her philosophy, metaphysics, logic, and natural philosophy. Her giftedness was well-recognized and she became well-known and beloved by the city of Bologna.
In April 1732 at the age of twenty, she appeared in the grand Pallazzo Publico and defended forty-nine theses. This was against the wishes of many of the male professors, but with the influence of Prospero Lambertini, the Archbishop of Bologna (later Pope Benedict XIV), who admired her ability and became her patron, she was given the opportunity. . The defenses were usually done at the university but because she was a women, she had to do this in public. This was the only way she could prove her merit to all possible critics.
In December of the same year, she was given an honorary chair in experimental physics at the University of Bologna. Her topic was “Water as a Natural Element of all Other Bodies”.But this was with the admonition that she not teach all male classes.
In 1738, she married Guiseppe Veratti, a physician and anatomy lecturer. At the time, she was reprimanded for this as he was considered less talented. One writer going so far to write, ”. . . the bride, might have done better if she had remained virgin. . .”
Her husband became her assistant, and they enjoyed a collaborative relationship. However, a woman of her time, she bore eight, or perhaps twelve, children. Difficult pregnancies damaged her health, and she left her teaching position at the University.
Instead, in 1743, she started an academy, lecturing from home, and giving private lessons. Once her children were grown in the 1760s, Bassi and her husband worked together on experimental research in electricity. This drew scientists such as Abbé Nollet and others to Bologna to study electricity.
In 1776, after the death of a professor of experimental physics at the university, she was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences at the age of 65. Her husband served as her teaching assistant. Unfortunately, she died two years later.
She remains popularly known in the city as the Bolognese Minerva.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Laura Bessi had many firsts:
- Elected to the Academy of Sciences in Bologna in 1732 at the age of 21, she was the first woman member of any scientific organization.
- She was the second woman to earn a doctorate in science. (Italian Elena Piscopia was the first in 1678.)
- She was the first woman to be elected the chair of physics at any university.
- She was the first salaried female teacher in a university and the highest paid.
LEGACY
Bassi’s scientific influence was major. She taught numerous scientists who became well-know physicists. She corresponded with the grand men of science of her time including Voltaire, Beccaria, Algarotti, Nollet, and Volta. Several of her thesis dealt with optics and light and showed the influence of Newton’s work. She became an active proponent of his theories and all her life taught and spread knowledge of his work widely.
In 1778, Laura Bassi died at the age of 66.
Alberto Elena (1991) writes:
“… she was a figure of the greatest importance in the intellectually flourishing Bologna of the eighteenth century and one of the leading characters in the acclimatisation of Newtonian natural philosophy in the Italian states. While there can be no doubt that the city itself accentuated Bassi’s fame in order to promote its own glory, the little we know about her physical researches and her Newtonian commitment is enough to make it clear that she deserves a place in the history of science.”
PUBLICATIONS
Laura Bassi wrote over twenty-eight papers on topics such as physics and hydraulics. These reveal only a small fraction of her research. Hindered by teaching duties, childcare, and health issues, only five of these were published.
Her published works are:
- 1732 De acqua corpore naturali elemento aliorum corporum parte universi (Concerning bodies of water as natural elements of other parts of the universe, a collection of theses for university appointment.
- 1745 De aeris compressione (Concerning air pressure, 1745)
- 1757 De problemate quodam hydrometrico (Concerning certain problems in hydrometrics.
- 1757 De problemate quodam mechanico (Concerning certain problems in mechanics.
- 1792 De immixto fluidis aere (Concerning intermixed gaseous fluid. posthumously published.)
LEARN MORE ABOUT LAURA BASSI
Laura Maria Caterina Bassi https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/project/directory-of-women-philosophers/bassi-laura-maria-caterina-1711-1778/
Lara Bassi https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Bassi/
“It is six years since I began giving private physics classes in my house daily, for eight months of the year. I support these myself, paying for all the necessary equipment apart from that which my husband had made when he was lecturing in philosophy. The classes have gathered such momentum that they are now attended by people of considerable education, including foreigners, rather than by youths”.
Laura Bassi 1749