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    874 GALLERY OF ILLUSTRIOUS ITALIAN WOMEN...

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    Four Female Professors Of The University...

    coined by Antonio _Lazzari , on one side of which , her portrait is surmounted by the following ? words : —Laura Cat . Bassi . Bo _: sr .

    Pull ,. DOCT . _CoiiIiEa . I / ECT . PlJBIi . _LsTST . _SciEN " . SOC . AST . XX . MDCCXXXII . —( Laura Caterina Bassi , Bologna , Doctor of the

    College of Philosophy , Public Lecturer in the Scientific Institute * Age 20 , 1732 . ) On the other side is a figure of Minerva , with

    the globe at her feet , on which an owl is perching ;—with , her right hand she draws back her shieldand in her left holds a lihted lamp

    thus displaying herself to a , young girl . _Soxi cur fas g vidisse , _Mikeeya is the inscription . ( 5 ) Thusat the age of twentyLaura

    commenced her course of philosophical , lectures , amid a cro , wd of students and foreigners . Her contemporaries pronounce these

    lectures to have been perfect of their kind . To a minute acquaintance with all the systems of philosophy , she united the faculty of eliminating

    thence the principal truths , and animating her discourses with her own spirit . She rendered them intelligible to the least advanced

    among her scholars by a clearness of conception and simplicity of expression only to be obtained by those teachers who are absolute

    masters of their subject . At the same time , she completed her studies in experimental natural philosophy , and gave private lessons

    In her own house for twenty-eight years successively , and on the death of Doctor Gr . Balbi , professor of natural philosophy in the

    institute , she was named his successor hy the senate . Madame de Boccagein her " Lettres surTItalie" narrates that she

    listened to one of these , lectures , in which Laura , developed with great clearness and equal profundity the phenomenon of irritability ,

    and in the seventeenth volume of the Bibliotheque Italique we read * " Laura Bassi is well versed in metaphysicsbut prefers the study of

    natural philosophy : she seems perfectly acquainted , with all the systems , and conversed with great ability on vegetation , on the

    origin of springs , on the ebb and flow of the tides , on light ; on color , on sound , on the planetary system , etc .: she is now studying

    mathematics , in order to master Newton , finding peculiar attractions in English systems of philosophy . " Brucker places her among the

    most illustrious personages of the age , and considers her one of the literary miracles of the eighteenth century . ( 6 )

    The time absorbed by her public and private teaching , prevented her from committing to paper the results of her perennial studies .

    We find two of her dissertations , —De problemate quodam hydrometrico and De _probZemate quodam mechanico in the fourth volume of

    the Commentaries of the Institute of Bologna , and in the first volume all her experiments on the compressibility of air are

    recorded under the title De Aeris compressione . Her dissertations delivered annually in the Academy , are preserved in manuscript ;

    ( 5 ) Fantuzzi idem , p . 886 .

    referenda ( 6 ) " . e . t . sa > in culi ter nostri maxima . Deciini aeyi nos oetav tri decora i miraculis Laura litterariis Maria Catharina adjicienda Bassi est . ,

    874 Gallery Of Illustrious Italian Women...

    874 GALLERY OF ILLUSTRIOUS ITALIAN WOMEN .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1858, page 374, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081858/page/14/