Amazons of the pen
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1566410,00.html
Long before the bra-burning 60s, equal rights were topical for
Enlightenment women in the 18th century, who challenged male preserves
of politics and science
Barbara Taylor
Saturday September 10, 2005
The Guardian
In 1732, Laura Bassi was awarded a doctorate in natural philosophy from
the University of Bologna; a few months later she was appointed to a
professorship there. For 45 years she taught philosophy, mathematics
and Newtonian physics. She received two further professorships and
corresponded with leading scientists across Europe - all this while
producing eight children, five of whom survived infancy.
To her many admirers, Bassi was an icon of female achievement, but she
was by no means alone. Between 1730 and 1770 the Bologna Academy of the
Institute for Sciences admitted many well-known women scientists and
mathematicians, including Maria Agnesi, author of an influential
mathematics textbook, and Voltaire's mistress Emilie de Ch=E2telet,
translator and commentator on Newton's Principia Mathematica, notorious
for her daring conciliation of Newtonian physics with the metaphysics
of Leibniz. "She was a great man," Voltaire wrote of his brilliant
lover, "whose only fault was in being a woman."
The Age of Enlightenment
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.radio.talk/msg/91a00f14507c95e7
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