200 years before Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, one of her most interesting predecessors, the physicist Laura Bassi (1711–78), was born.

---

Laura Bassi might not be a household name, but she was a shining star of 18th-century Italian physics – and could well have been the first woman to forge a professional scientific career that coincided with the development of experimental physics.

Her research and teaching focused primarily on two things: Isaac Newton’s newfangled ideas about how objects moved, and the physics of electricity. The latter was a hot topic among scientists at the time, who were busy trying to figure out what, exactly, electricity actually was and how it related to the force that makes living things… well, live.

Those questions preoccupied people like Alessandro Volta, Luigi Galvani, Benjamin Franklin, and Laura Bassi.

---

PRIZES, ACHIEVEMENTS, HONOURS

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti

Inspiration

Out of Newton’s time, the period of enlightenment, an era of navigators and explorers evolves into the European Industrial revolution: which requires further development of the ideas from those such as Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Isaac Wren of the previous century.

It is this call that Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti, known to all as Laura Bassi, answers. Fortunately, she is born into an “enlightened” family, which allows her to carry out studies not provided for women. 

Previous to the 18th century the sons of rich bourgeois and nobles are allowed to study, but not girls, who were often only able to pursue limited subjects of education: reading, writing, sewing, and reciting the rosary. However, even if they are lucky enough to gain acceptance into women’s boarding schools. Once their lessons were completed, more often than not, their only options were to either marry or become a nun.

They were not allowed to study for these reasons:

• It is believed that the cultured woman could interfere in family affairs and cause problems for her wealth. 
• Moreover, she would no longer be ‘obedient’ and the men ‘masters’ would have to endure a thousand questions, which they do not like. 

Happily, something changed in the second half of the 18th century -the doors somewhat nudge open for women who contribute to the cultural growth of society, especially in Bologna, the oldest university in the Western World. ,

As Bologna is a learned city, Bassi’s father has her educated at home from the age of 5, and she a child prodigy who studies Latin and French

Laura Bassi‘s father is a prosperous lawyer from Scandiano, Italy named Giuseppe Bassi. Her mother is Rosa Marie Cesarei and is often sick.

---

The ever-present family doctor and professor of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna, Gaetano Tacconi quickly noticed Bassi’s keen interest and studious mind. When she is about 13 years old, he asks her father, Giuseppe permission to let him tutor her in philosophy – a subject that all doctors learn as part of their medical education.

Though Bassi, turns out to be a very witty child, her parents are reluctant to make her a public child prodigy, which was sometimes done in the 18th century, especially among aristocratic families where, girls raised by rich and ambitious parents, were exhibited in literary salons.

As a result, Bassi receives the bulk of her education from him at home, including the study of Aristotelian, Galilean and Cartesian physics and despite her young age, Bassi shows promise with her impressive intellect. He sees the brilliance of the young .woman before him and gives Laura a breadth of education unavailable to most. Her cousin, Father Lorenzo Stegani also tutors her in Latin, French and arithmetic.

On the 5th of July 1687, just 24 years before Bassi was born, Sir Isaac Newton published in LatimPrincipia (also known as Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)  a work in three books, forming the foundation of classical mechanics by explaining the physical laws that govern how objects move and how gravity influences them.

Newton’s laws of motion were stated, those being:

1. An object is at rest (or continues to move with a constant speed, if it is moving) unless it is acted upon by an external force.
2. The rate of change of momentum of a body over time is directly proportional to the force applied and occurs in the same direction as the applied force. 

In other words, F = dp/dt or, F = m a. 

3. When object 1 exerts a force on object 2, object 2 will exert an equal force in magnitude and opposite in direction on object 1. (meaning that every action has a “re”-action)

Of course, he also stated the well-known relation for the gravitational force between two objects, that F_g = G * m₁*m₂ / d². 

Mathematics

Most of Principia is written using mathematical concepts people didn’t really understand at first. That is known today as calculus. Before talking about calculus, it is imperative to understand some other contributions of his, which helped develop calculus, namely the binomial theorem.

Newton also discovered the binomial theorem during his years in Cambridge, mentioning that this was done during his actual years in Cambridge, before the Plague. What is a binomial?

Think of it as a polynomial, a function that could look like x² – y². The binomial theorem works mostly with binomials having the form of (x+y)ⁿ. Newton discovered that he could beautifully expand a generalized binomial (I will explain in a bit), allowing nonnegative integers or real exponents (unlike 2, for example) in an easily computable sum.

I said that he wanted to expand a generalized binomial because the binomial theorem wasn’t actually invented by Newton, as special cases were known since Euclid (who computed (x+y)^2, for example. 

He further used the binomial theorem to calculate series and limits of series, which later led him to the discovery of calculus. What is calculus? Basically, working with things that approach infinity. Imagine a graph that has only a straight line in it.

 

It shouldn’t be tough for you to compute the area under the graph. After all, it is a triangle. Let’s now take a random graph, which doesn’t look at all like a line.

Find the area under this graph. The only thing you can do is make parts on this graph with shapes you know how to find the area. A rectangle, for example. You make a lot of those small rectangles, you find their area, and then you sum them. You will be close to the real area. But to get the best approximation of the area, you will need those rectangles to be as small as possible to cover as much of that curve as it’s possible. Those shapes will “approach” infinity.

Calculus is the whole “manual” of working with things approaching infinity. You get the exact rules of how you can work with infinities and get proper answers, which are, of course, not the exact real ones, but close to the real one by an infinitesimal, which is as good as it can get, and good enough for us to work with it in our daily lives. 

Why did Newton invent calculus? Even in the graph, what you actually want to measure, is the rate of change in the smallest amount of time possible. Now imagine an apple falling, for example. Its velocity is not constant. Generally speaking, if you compute a moving object’s velocity by the well-known formula v = d / t, what you will get is an average velocity. If you want to find the instantaneous velocity, you will definitely need calculus. 

Optics

Most of Newton’s theoretical work in optics can be found in “Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light,”a book he published in 1704. It represents a major work for the history of science, and unlike Principia, it is straightforward to read (if you ask me). It was the first real science work I read during high-school, and I remember picking it up for fun from the city library. 

Regarding his practical work, his contribution is significant. Many people still use it for one of the most interesting activities (if you ask me): studying the sky. Newton’s innovation was the reflector telescope. It is now one of the easiest telescopes to build by amateurs. It has a primary mirror and a flat secondary mirror, as shown in the picture: 

Of his creation, Newton said: 

“The diameter of the sphere to which the Metal was ground concave was about 25 English Inches, and by consequence the length of the Instrument about six Inches and a quarter. The Eye-glass was Plano-convex, and the diameter of the Sphere to which the convex side was ground was about 1/5 of an inch, or a little less, and by consequence, it magnified between 30 and 40 times. By another way of measuring, I found it magnified 35 times.

The concave Metal bore an Aperture of an Inch and a third part, but the Aperture was limited not by an Opake Circle, covering the limb of the Metal roundabout, but be an opake Circle, placed between the Eyeglass and the Eye, and perforated in the middle with a little round hole for the Rays to pass through to the Eye. For this Circle being placed here, stopp’d much of the erroneous Light, which otherwise would have disturbed the Vision.

By comparing it with a pretty good Perspective of four Feet in length, made with a concave Eye-glass, I could read at a greater distance with my own Instrument than with the Glass. Yet Objects appeared much darker in it than in the Glass, and that partly because more Light was lost by Reflexion in the Metal, than by Refraction in the Glass, and partly because my Instrument was overcharged.

Had it magnified but 30 or 25 times, it would have made the Object appear more brisk and pleasant” … “The object-metal was two inches broad and about one-third part of an inch thick to keep it from bending. I had two of these metals, and when I had polished them both, I tried which was best; and ground the other again, to see if I could make it better, than that which I kept.”

---

 Bologna’s New “Minerva”

Gaetano Tacconi, who insists that Bassi’s knowledge should not remain secret, which was one of the conditions for which the young woman had been allowed to study. 

Eager to show off his star pupil, in 1731 at the paternal house, though gradually,”philosophical meetings”, begin to take place, where Laura’s knowledge is made public, and illustrious men of science, nobles and prelates are called to examine her progress. Unfortauately , Newton’s ideas were still pretty controversial in scientific circles – controversial enough, in fact, to drive a wedge between Bassi and her tutor by the time she was 20.

By the start of 1732, virtually everyone in Bologna knew of her. People crowded into her house to listen to the 20-year-old debate just about every aspect of the history of philosophy and physics with the city’s leading professors and academicians.

Indeed, Bologna’s Archbishop Prospero Lambertini – who believes in acknowledging talent wherever it might be found – paid a personal visit to assure himself that Bassi is truly all that her admirers report her to be. His support helps launch Bassi’s scientific career.

In March 1732 she becomes the first female member of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna Institute, which is equivalent to other recent scientific societies such as the Royal Society.

It is the first step towards a spectacularly public life as a female scientist in the Age of Enlightenment.

The institutional recognition that Bassi receives makes her the emblematic female scientist of her generation, but the Bologna Academy, which still exists today, is initially reluctant to make Bassi a precedent for admitting other women.

They consider her appointment as an academician to be purely honorific and do not expect her to participate in the ordinary business of the academy.

This is also true of Bassi’s university position.

Her professorship is created specifically for her, beyond the normal number of faculty positions.

Neither appointment is without controversy since there were many young male academics waiting for such opportunities. Funding then, as now, is always tight and some of her older male colleagues – and even at least one other learned woman – considers it indecent for a young woman to be “always in the middle of a meeting of men”, debating the secrets of nature with them.

Nonetheless, Archbishop Lambertini’s view that women of talent deserve recognition prevaila, although with an explicit injunction that Bassi only lecture occasionally when she was specifically asked by her employers to do so “by reason of sex”.

This would, for example, be when a distinguished visitor arrives, or in one of Bologna’s famous public debates on anatomy during Carnavale’ , or on one occasion when a degree is conferred. This restriction is felt to be an important concession to the question of modesty and decency.

The University of Bologna had made an exception for Bassi, but it would only go so far; the university only rarely allows her to give formal, public lectures – the kind that bring scientists fame, funding, and contacts – and doesn’t give her any research funding.

Shock tactics

If Bassi accepts the terms of her position as defined in 1732, there would be little more to say about her life and work. From the start, however, she feels that she has been offered an extraordinary opportunity to pursue her intellectual passions and contribute to the betterment of society with her knowledge.

Far from being honored, she is annoyed. Bassi politely but firmly requests the restrictions on her teaching be lifted. When this request was ignored, she concentrates instead on a programme of additional study designed to increase her value as a scientist.

She shocks a number of people by requesting a license to read books that had been prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church. She obtains permission from the Vatican to access the list of forbidden books, including the works of Galielo, Kepler, Descartes and Bacon appear; all of which she deemed necessary to her ambitions. and this is granted to her, as to male scholars, at the age of 24.

Archbishop Lambertini, a man of very rare intelligence, is a very important figure, who has perfectly understood how it is now necessary to create an alliance between science and faith, convinced that he had to get closer to civil society and modern culture. 

Within a general project of cultural renewal, linked however not to private aristocratic circles, but to the Institute of Sciences of the city, he becomes the protector not only of the sciences, but encourages and sponsores female knowledge. 

He is certainly not isolated in this project, but advises by a robust group of Bolognese scientists who, together with him, supported and accompanied Laura Bassi’s successes.

In a period when women weren’t even admitted to most universities, Lambertini wielded enough power to make sure that Bassi got her chance at a doctorate.

That chance took the form of a public challenge. Lambertini arranged for Bassi to present 49 theses – essays proposing her ideas about science – and defend them in a debate against four professors of physics from the University of Bologna and it is the  annus mirabilis of Laura’s career:

In March she became a member of the Academy of Sciences; in May she obtained her PhD and in October she was assigned the Chair at the University. 

On April 17, 1732, Bassi defended her theses in the Palazzo Publico, one of Bologna’s most important government buildings, and the audience was packed with university professors, students, city officials, religious leaders, and assorted nobility.

Her Newtonian orientation emerges clearly, where she affirms, the task of the natural philosopher is to deduce natural laws by observing phenomena, and not, as the Cartesians want, derive them from evident rational principles and her first lesson, which is held in December at the Archiginnasio, seat of the ancient university, is certainly crowded.

(It’s worth pausing to take note of a couple of things about that particular “first.” The most important is that obtaining a doctorate from a university , at the time, is a specifically European way of recognizing a person’s knowledge. The fact that Piscopia and Bassi are the first women to earn PhDs doesn’t mean they were the first women in the world to teach philosophy and science, or to engage in research or writing about those subjects.

It just means that they are the first in Europe to have their knowledge and work recognized in a particular way. The knowledge of the infinitesimal calculus allows her to possess specific and exclusive skills in the Bolognese scientific entourage where those who teach physics are, for the most part, a doctor.

Second, the average doctoral thesis in 1732 is a few orders of magnitude shorter than the average doctoral thesis in 2021, so we shouldn’t picture Bassi defending 49 modern-style dissertations, each with hundreds of pages of text and references.

She probably presents roughly the same amount of work as a modern graduate student, or perhaps a bit more – although most modern graduate students don’t have to defend their research in front of the Senate of Bologna and a future Pope. Bassi however, doesn’t just know her subjects and contribute original ideas to them; she apparently also has nerves of pure steel and she spends her career fighting for equal conditions. She also makes some impressive headway for the time. She is the first woman to be elected as an honorary member of the Academy of the Institute for Sciences in Bologna, paving the way for other female members. Plus, her job comes with a salary, and a good one at that. Unlike generations of women after her, Bassi actually makes more money than most of her male colleagues. But she os permitted to do much less.)

Her public role thus becomes that of the prodigy woman, a marvel to flaunt; and her fame also fell on his city, Bologna.

An entire magazine written in Germany is published in 1737 mentioning Laura Bassi and her research.

Recognizing the limits of her early education, which did not include advanced mathematics, Bassi studies calculus with Gabriele Manfredi. She also apprentices herself with the city’s professor of experimental physics and chemistry, Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari. Both are members of the Royal Society and had stellar reputations. This postgraduate education provides her with the skills to contribute substantively to an emerging teaching and research programme of Newtonian physics then under development.

---

In 1738 she decides to marry Giuseppe Veratti, a colleague, a doctor, and one of the most progressive scientists of the time.

And unlike many other women who were encouraged to abandon their other pursuits after marriage for the home, she said pointedly: “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.”

 She is certain that Veratti will not place obstacles in her studies and this is very true because Veratti proves to be an incredible ally for Laura’s scientific career, but theirs was also a marriage of love, from which 8 children were born, of which 5 will survive to adulthood.

However, Bassi is not content to be a figurehead. She wants to do scientific research, and she wants to teach and lecture on the same terms as any other professor. With more than a decade of determined effort and the backing of the Pope himself (Lambertini became Pope Benedict XIV in 1740), she finally succeeds.

A few years later, she is able to join the pope’s Benedettini — an elite group of 25 scientists — making her the only woman to be elected to the prestigious society.

She is the 25th appointed, but some of are opposed to Laura Bassi joining them, based on the usual sextist arguments. Bassi is eventually invited but in order not to upset the men who stand against her she is not granted the same voting rights as them.

Each of them has to submit one paper a year to the Pope. Laura submits one 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).

But by this point, her work is renowned from afar. The famous Enlightenment thinker Voltaire writes to her: “There is no Bassi in London, and I would be much happier to be added to your Academy of Bologna than to that of the English, even though it has produced a Newton.”

 Giuseppe, a doctor of medicine, has particular interests in electricity, most particularly the therapeutic use of electricity and atmospheric electricity- applying electricity to various diseases, including paralysis and arthritis.  The positive results are then set down in a book published in 1748.

The university finally agrees, in 1749, to fund Bassi’s research and allow her to teach private lessons.

The private lessons allow Bassi the freedom to teach Newtonian physics, since it isn’t on the university’s official curriculum. Her research focuses mostly on electricity, although she writes and lectures on a wide range of topics in physics, mathematics, and chemistry. For example, she is also credited for spreading and pioneering research on electricity in Italy ans scholars visiting from all across Europe and even from America were keen on visiting the dynamic duo.

She and her husband begin offering private lessons at her home, which soon attracts both local and foreign aspiring scientists. It is equipped with an updated and modern scientific cabinet, and offers a daily course in Newtonian experimental physics that only Bassi can offer. 

Many of the tools in the laboratory are also used to prepare Laura’s academic papers, as well as to support heated debates, by correspondence, with some of the most illustrious scientists of the time. She remains in close contact with Giovanni Battista Beccaria, the abbot Jean Antonie Nollet, Alessandro Volta, Felice Fontana and is a teacher of Lazzaro Spallanzani, his cousin.

Gradually, their home on Via Barberia fills with more instruments necessary for teaching and experimentation. Veratti explores deeper, the relationship between medicine, physiology and animal electricity, performing experiments that would inspire a number of younger colleagues including Luigi Galvani, who became famous for his work on reanimating the legs of dissected frogs with an electrical charge and inspires, Frankenstein.

Bassi initially works on classical problems that make use of her training as a mathematical physicist and went on to publish papers on exceptions to Boyle’s law, mechanics and hydrometry.

Yet she consistently finds herself gravitating towards questions that involved her skills as an experimentalist: problems of refraction, the nature of electricity and eventually the composition of air.

Had these papers survived, we would know a great deal more about her contributions to each of these subjects. Yet it is nonetheless apparent that she is a great follower of the Newtonian programme of research throughout the 18th century, including the work of Stephen Hales, Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley. She is a scientist determined to keep up with the times in which she lives.

Throughout Bassi’s life, she presents several dissertations on topics such as gravity, refrangibility, mechanics, and hydraulics. In the meantime, she along with her husband also help make Bologna a center for experimental research in electricity.

Paolo, her son, becomes a physicist while the other two Giovanni, and Giacomo become canons in the Church. Her only surviving daughter, Catarina, becomes a nun. But little is known of Laura Bassi’s day to day existence, though she speaks the French language perfectly, which she uses both to discuss with her visitors and in experimental demonstrations for the benefit of foreigners- like so many with amazing minds she seems to fit a great deal into her life. Their house is full of scientists and scholars, not just from Italy but all over Europe.

In the 1760s Bassi began performing experiments with Veratti on possible medicinal applications of electricity, but she does not publish any papers on the subject. 

In 1776, she receives the ultimate honor when she is named the chair of experimental physics at the Institute of Science, obtaining that institutional recognition to which she had aspired throughout her scientific career. She will remain on that chair until her death two years later.

When she died at age 66 on February 20, 1778, she was one of the most famous women in Bologna. In a public funeral, her colleagues carried her casket in a solemn procession to the church of Corpus Domini in Bologna.  Giuseppe takes on her role after her death but how lonely he must feel after all they had shared together. There is a collection of papers pertaining to the Bassi Veratti estate.

Much like her patron, Pope Benedict, Bassi is an “enlightened Catholic who sees no conflict between the pursuit of new knowledge and the traditions of faith.” In fact, the more she understands the natural world, the more she felt like she can appreciate God’s creation.

sources:

Teodorescu, B., & Bogdan TeodorescuAuthor at ‘The Secrets Of The Universe’. (2021, March 22). Newton’s top Contributions: How the brilliant PHYSICIST Revolutionized science in the 17th century. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.secretsofuniverse.in/newtons-contributions-to-science/

Smith, K. (2021, April 17). Saturday’s Google Doodle CELEBRATES PHYSICIST laura bassi. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2021/04/17/saturdays-google-doodle-celebrates-physicist-laura-bassi/?sh=681dc7fb22da

Laura Bassi: Una DONNA STRAORDINARIA. (2020, April 10). Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://mediterraneinews.it/2020/04/10/laura-bassi-una-donna-straordinaria/

Sack, H. (2018, October 29). Laura Bassi – the first woman with a university chair. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from http://scihi.org/laura-bassi-university-chair/

Laura Bassi physicist. (2019, March 13). Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://intriguing-history.com/laura-bassi-scientist/’

Laura Bassi and the city of learning. (2021, March 08). Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://physicsworld.com/a/laura-bassi-and-the-city-of-learning/