Maria Gaetana Agnesi was a child prodigy (at least five languages by age 9) and math geek extraordinaire. As the oldest of 21 children, she took over caring for her siblings when her mother died. But that didn't stop her fiercely intelligent mind from writing a textbook on calculus in her spare time, a pioneering volume called Analytical Institutions that provided a comprehensive treatise of the relatively new math and brought disparate mathematicians together in dialogue. The text so overwhelmingly impressed academicians that the Bologna Academy of Sciences (now part of University of Bologna) gave her an honorary degree and invited her onto its faculty. This in a time when women were thought to not deserve an education.
She declined. She chose a religious life helping the needy, which was her true passion. Math was just a hobby.
Agnes Scott College
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