Laura Bassi (1711–1778)

One of the most accomplished women in eighteenth-century science, Laura Bassi made significant contributions to contemporary discussions in mechanics, hydraulics, and natural philosophy, while playing an important role in the spread of Newtonian physics through her teaching, writing, and correspondence.

Born in Bologna to Giuseppe Bassi, an influential lawyer, and his wife Rosa Cesári, about whom very little is known, Laura Maria Caterina Bassi enjoyed an intellectually demanding education, heavily weighted towards the sciences, from an early age. She was tutored privately for a time by Gaetano Tacconi, a professor at the local College of Medicine, before being taken under the wing of the learned theologian and lawyer Prospero Lambertini, who would eventually go on to become Pope Benedict XIV in 1740.

As her patron, Lambertini encouraged Bassi to focus her scientific interests on questions in experimental physics, her evident ability in this field leading her to be awarded a doctorate of philosophy in 1732—as only the second woman in Europe to achieve this accolade—and to be elected the first female member of the illustrious Bologna Academy of Sciences shortly afterwards. Around this time, she began studying mathematics and Newtonian physics with the noted mathematician Gabriele Manfredi, who along with his brother, Eustachio, had also instructed his two sisters Teresa and Maddelena. In February 1738, she married Giovanni Giuseppe Veratti, who taught natural philosophy at Bologna.

Raising with her husband around nine children—the precise number is not known—, Bassi carried out most of her teaching and research in her own home. But this did not impede her public impact: by delivering public lectures, often combined with suitably impressive experiments, she succeeded in acquiring a strong and visible local presence. Her lectures provided among other things theoretical and experimental support to Newtonian physics and to Benjamin Franklin’s theory of electricity. Bassi also carried out experiments on the Boyle–Mariotte law and the demonstration of its limits. On the initiative of her husband, she also installed the first lightning conductor in Italy, attaching it to the tower of the Bologna Academy. However, despite Bassi’s efforts to demonstrate its potential value in preventing fires, this innovation fell victim to popular superstition and had to be dismantled. This public setback in no way dented her scientific reputation, and she went on to produce some twenty-eight papers in all for the Academy on topics ranging from physics and hydraulics to mathematics and chemistry. Two years before her death, in 1776, she was named professor of experimental physics at the Academy, with her husband working thereafter officially as her assistant.

The impact of Bassi’s scientific activity was by no means restricted to her native city. She built up an extensive network of correspondents across Europe, encompassing many of the leading natural philosophers of her day. Francesco Algarotti, Ruger Boscovich, Giovanni Battista Beccaria, Albrecht von Haller, Jérôme Lalande, Jean-François Nollet, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Alessandro Volta, and Voltaire all exchanged letters with her. Her strong contemporary reputation was unable, however, to prevent her falling largely into oblivion in the years following her death.