Italian women in science from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.

This study attempts to present a comprehensive history of Italian women in science from the Renaissance to the second half of the nineteenth century, when Italian universities welcomed women as students. Most of the women discussed were active in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at a time when the sciences enjoyed great popularity. Then, some women were members of publicly-funded scientific academies, were university graduates and lecturers at institutes of sciences, and/or universities, and published in learned journals. Since many important women natural philosophers operated during the eighteenth century, there has been a tendency to see their learning in the sciences, degrees, memberships to scientific academies, and lectureships solely as the product of the Enlightenment. However, tradition played a role in their scientific education, in the granting of degrees, memberships and lectureships, and even in the scientific activities some women felt they were entitled to follow. The belief Pope Benedict XIV had that women had played a role at the University of Bologna in past centuries was pivotal in his decision to grant them degrees and positions at the university and its institutions of higher learning in the eighteenth century. Women belonged to publicly-funded academies of sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because literary and philosophical academies, from which various scientific academies would spring, had not been adverse to welcoming women in their midst. Some women were active in astronomy, botany, medicine, natural philosophy, mathematics, teaching, patronage, and translation during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as some of their sisters had been during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Of course, the way women carried out these scientific activities modified in later centuries to reflect the popularity and the development of the sciences, university reforms, censorship of the Copernican system, and social changes. Often families and teachers educated women in science in order to increase their own prestige. Nevertheless, there was a widespread belief amongst Italian men that some women were exceptional, and raised above their sex, and therefore could receive an education at par with men, and go further than the rest of their sex. This attitude on the part of the male elite allowed a few women to continue to be associated with institutions of higher learning in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the sciences became professionalized. Most of the Italian women studied were followers of scientific trends. However, there were some notable exceptions at the local and national level. Some women such as Laura Bassi, Elisabetta Fiorini Mazzanti, Caterina. Scarpellini, Anna Morandi Manzolini, and Maria Gaetana Agnesi carried out some pioneering work in the Italian context