"Oh God," sighed the wife one morning, "I'm convinced my mind is almost completely gone!"
Her husband looked up from the newspaper and commented, "I'm not surprised: You've been giving me a piece of it every day for twenty years!"
Maria Gaetana AgnesiDied 9 Jan 1799 at age 80 (born 16 May 1718).Italian mathematician and philosopher who was the first woman in the Western world considered to be a mathematician. In Propositiones Philosophicae (1738) she presented a series of essays on philosophy and natural science that she had defended in discourses with invited intellectuals who were invited her father's home. In 1748, her two volumes of Analytical Institutions, were acclaimed by the academic world as one of the first and complete publications that brought together the works of various mathematicians on finite and infinitesimal analysis. After the death of her father in 1752, Agnesi entirely devoted herself and spent her money to do charitable work. She died in total poverty in the poorhouse of which she had been the director. |
