Laura Bassi

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Laura Bassi

Laura Bassi (actually Laura Maria Caterina Bassi , married Bassi Verati or Veratti ; born October 31, 1711 in Bologna , † February 20, 1778 there ) was the first female university professor in Europe . She held a professorship for philosophy and later also for physics .

Life

She was the only surviving child of the lawyer Giuseppe Bassi and Rosa Cesarei. Her father and a relative taught her, and later the family doctor in particular, the medical professor Gaetano Tacconi. He was impressed with the way she summarized his oral therapy instructions in both Latin and French.

Her tutor Tacconi was so excited about her teaching progress that he first had it debated in front of medical colleagues and other scientists in 1732. Her appearance impressed those present so much that she was accepted as an honorary member of the Bolognese Academy (although the same academy decreed a little later that no more women would be accepted). In April 1732 she passed a two-hour public doctoral examination in a great public spectacle in the town hall of Bologna, in which she successfully presented 49 theses and received the title of Doctor of Philosophy . In the following year she was the first woman in Europe to be appointed professor of philosophy (which also included theoretical parts of physics) at the University of Bologna , that is, she was listed in the university's course catalog and received an annual salary. She was expressly allowed to hold lectures only with the approval of the magistrate, which seldom happened until the regulation was relaxed in 1739, but she held lectures publicly at other locations. She was considered a local celebrity in Bologna and beyond (on the occasion of her appointment as professor, two volumes of poems of praise appeared in Bologna in 1732) and many travelers visited her. When she married Giuseppe Verati (1707–1793), a far less well-known doctor who was not even wealthy, in 1738, it was felt as a mesalliance . In addition, it took offense that they lived in Laura Bassi's parents' house and one would have preferred if the town's Minerva (as she was called) had remained a virgin like her namesake. After her father's death, she was financially independent and could freely decide about her marriage. With Verati she had eight children, five of whom reached adulthood.

She later turned to physics and gave regular public lectures at her home, which were very well received. Bassi was considered a supporter of Isaac Newton's theories (especially in the assumption of forces acting at a distance) and already criticized Descartes' physics in her dissertation thesis (which assumed an interaction like in a fluid over vortices). She carried out experiments on the Boyle-Mariotte law and its limits, on gas bubbles in liquids and on the then sensational electricity, on which she experimented a lot with her husband, who mainly had applications in medicine in mind. She supported the theory of Benjamin Franklin , who saw electricity as a single electrical fluid . The first lightning rod in Italy, installed on the initiative of her husband in 1752, fell victim to superstition and had to be removed from the roof of the Bolognese Academy due to protests by residents. The Bassis also carried out their experiments in their country house, where Laura Bassi set up an observatory. But she was also well versed in theory, worked in particular on hydromechanics and published in the treatises of the Bolognese Academy.

She was a member of the Benedettini circle of the Bolognese Academy of Sciences , which she owed above all to Pope Benedict XIV , who, as a native of Bolognese, wanted to increase the academic reputation of the academy. He had promoted her career before, since he (as Prospero Lambertini) became Archbishop of Bologna in 1731. The Benedettini goods by the reforming 1745 by the Benedict a core of the academy and received a fixed payment. Bassi was not allowed to participate in the election of new academy members (despite her protest) and had to give her lectures after her male colleagues. In 1754 she was accepted into the Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati .

Famous scholars were in correspondence with her, such as Algarotti , Voltaire (the enlightener asked her for support for his admission to the Bolognese Academy), Jérôme Lalande (who attended her courses on experimental physics), Ruger Boscovich , Jean-Antoine Nollet , Giambatista Beccaria , Albrecht von Haller , Lazzaro Spallanzani (who was her student) and Alessandro Volta .

Despite her reputation, the physics professorship that became vacant in 1772 at the Istituto delle Scienze di Bologna , founded in 1711, was initially not offered to her, but to her husband. It was only when he renounced this that she became a professor of physics in 1776. She had health problems all her life and died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

On October 5, 2017 the asteroid (15742) Laurabassi was named after her, and in 2019 the research vessel Laura Bassi of the Geophysical Institute Trieste .

Sources and literature

swell

  • G. Cenerelli (editor): Lettere inedite alla celebre Laura Bassi scritte da illustri italiani e stranieri , Bologna 1885.
  • Giovanni Fantuzzi: Elogio della dottoressa Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Verati , Bologna 1778, reprinted in Fantuzzi Note degli scrittori bolognesi , Volume 1, Bologna 1781
  • Elio Melli (Editor): Epistolario di Laura Bassi Verati. Edizione critica, introduction and note. Studi e inediti per il primo centenario dell'Istituto Magistrale Laura Bassi. Bologna: STE, 1960
  • Alcune lettere di Laura Bassi Veratti al Dottor Flaminio Scarleselli , Bologna, Tipi della volpe al sassi, 1836

literature

  • Beate Ceranski: And she is not afraid of anyone. The physicist Laura Bassi (1711–1778) . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt (Main) 1996, ISBN 978-3593356006
  • Beate Ceranski: Laura Bassi , Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Online
  • Bassi Verati, Laura. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 7:  Bartolucci – Bellotto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1965.
  • Giambattista Comelli: Laura Bassi e il suo primo trionfo , Studi e memorie per la storia dell'Università di Bologna, Volume 3, Bologna 1912, pp. 197-256.
  • Ulla Fölsing: Brilliant relationships. Famous Couples in Science , Beck 1999 (therein the chapter Laura Bassi and Giuseppe Verati )
  • Paula Findlen: Science as a career in Enlightment Italy: The Strategies of Laura Bassi , Isis, Volume 84, 1993, pp. 441-469
  • Gabriella Berti Logan: The Desire to Contribute: An Eighteenth-Century Italian Woman of Science , American Historical Review, Volume 99, 1994, pp. 785-812
  • Marta Franceschini, Marta Cavazza: Laura Bassi. Minerva bolognese , Bononia University Press, 2011
  • Alberto Elena: In lode della filosofessa di Bologna ': An Introduction to Laura Bassi , Isis, Volume 82, 1991, pp. 510-518
  • Jean-Pierre Jenny: A scholar from the learned city. About the philosopher and physicist Laura Bassi (1711-1778) , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 29, 2011

Web links

Commons : Laura Bassi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Both spellings are common. Beate Ceranski: Laura Bassi , Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. ^ Ceranski, Dictionary Scientific Biography
  3. ↑ Some sources also speak of twelve: Ogilvie / Harvey (2000); Hugh Chisholm (Ed.): " Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina ". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition 1911). Cambridge University Press .
  4. ↑ Uta Ruscher in FemBio, see web links
  5. ↑ Uta Ruscher: Laura Bassi , FemBio, see web links
  6. ↑ She had studied mathematics with the mathematician and Senate Secretary Gabriele Manfredi , a brother of the mathematics professor in Bologna and astronomer Eustachio Manfredi (1674–1739), one of the founders of the Bolognese observatory.
  7. ↑ A total of thirteen papers on physics, eleven on hydraulics, one each on mechanics and chemistry and two on mathematics are known, published in the book by Ceranski in 1996. During her lifetime she published only two papers: Laura Bassi, De problemate quodam hydrometrico , De Bononiensi scientiarum et artium instituto atque academia commentarii, Volume 4, 1757, pp. 61-73, De problemate quodam mechanico , ibid. Pp. 74-79. Her experiments have also been described by the secretary of the academy Giampietro Zanotti: De aeris compressione , De Bononiensi scientiarum et artium instituto atque academia commentarii, Volume 2, 1745, pp. 347-353
  8. ^ KA Nies, Hypatia Institute , see web links
  9. ↑ Certificate of appointment as member 1754 for Laura Bassi Veratti (Fondo Speciale Bassi Veratti of the library of Archiginnasio online)
  10. ↑ Just like the travel writer Charles de Brosses , who noted that she occasionally wore her ermine robe to her lectures as a doctorate. Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey (Editor) The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science , Routledge 2000
  11. ↑ Uta Ruscher, FemBio. According to Ceranski, Dictionary of Scientific Biography , she became a physics professor in 1772.
personal data
SURNAME Bassi, Laura
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bassi Veratti, Laura Maria Caterina (full married name); Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina (full name at birth)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian philosopher, first professor in Europe (for physics)
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1711
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1778
Place of death Bologna