MARIA GAETANA AGNESI, <em>ENFANT PRODIGE</em>, MATEMATICA, PIA NOBILDONNA

Abstract

<jats:p>Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) was a prominent figure in eighteenth-century Milan. A child prodigy, and an attraction in the scientific and philosophical disputes organized in the paternal home, she was the first woman to publish a mathematical treatise, the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (1748), a clear and systematic presentation of both Cartesian geometry and infinitesimal analysis. Among the curves studied in that work is the versiera, (witch) the cubic curve that is still associated with her name. Appointed by Pope Benedict XIV in 1750 on the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna, she did not accept that assignment. After her father’s death in 1752, she left mathematics to devote herself entirely to pious works, and to taking care of poor and infirm women in the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, where she spent the last fifteen years of life.</jats:p>

Space and Time in the Foundations of Mathematics, or Some Challenges in the Interactions with Other Sciences

“…In his review of Hilbert's 1899 book, he acknowledges the technical achievement, but he stresses as well the loss of meaning, the trivialization of our understanding of space, the senseless reference to Mathematics as codings of axioms into «le piano raisonneur de Stanley Jevons» from which «on verrait sortir toute la Géométrie». Elsewhere Poincaré, will refer to this view of Mathematics, which underlies the foundational programs of Peano, Padoa, Hilbert, as «la machine à saucisses de Chicago»: from pigs and axioms produce sausages and theorems (see [Bottazzini, 1999]).…”

Interfaces of Incompleteness

“…Given their combinatorial complexity, no one dares say of these that they are "evidently" true by invoking ontological or quantum miracles. We are reduced to demonstrating them, of course outside of PA, as we will explain 11 . What is Gödel's responsibility in this?…”