Laura Bassi–The World's First Woman Professor in Natural Philosophy: An Iconic Physicist in Enlightenment Italy PDF
Preview Laura Bassi–The World's First Woman Professor in Natural Philosophy: An Iconic Physicist in Enlightenment Italy
Springer Biographies Laura Bassi–The World’s First Woman Professor in Natural Philosophy An Iconic Physicist in Enlightenment Italy LUISA CIFARELLI RAFFAELLA SIMILI EDS. Springer Biographies The books published in the Springer Biographies tell of the life and work of scholars,innovators,andpioneersinallfields oflearningandthroughout theages. Prominent scientists and philosophers will feature, but so too will lesser known personalitieswhosesignificantcontributionsdeservegreaterrecognitionandwhose remarkable life stories will stir and motivate readers. Authored by historians and other academic writers, the volumes describe and analyse the main achievements of their subjects in manner accessible to nonspecialists, interweaving these with salient aspects of the protagonists’ personal lives. Autobiographies and memoirs also fall into the scope of the series. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13617 Luisa Cifarelli Raffaella Simili (cid:129) Editors – ’ Laura Bassi The World s First Woman Professor in Natural Philosophy An Iconic Physicist in Enlightenment Italy 123 Società Italiana di Fisica Editors LuisaCifarelli Raffaella Simili Dipartimento di Fisica eAstronomia ProfessorEmeritus Universitàdi Bologna Universitàdi Bologna Bologna, Italy Bologna, Italy ISSN 2365-0613 ISSN 2365-0621 (electronic) SpringerBiographies ISBN978-3-030-53961-0 ISBN978-3-030-53962-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53962-7 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregard tojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. Coverillustration:PortraitofLauraBassi.CarloVandi,oiloncanvas,18thcentury,Bologna,Museodi PalazzoPoggi. ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Preface LauraMariaCaterinaBassiVeratti,knownasLauraBassi,wasborninBolognain 1711. In 1732, at the age of 21, she became the first female member of the influential Accademia dell’Istituto delle Scienze in Bologna and was the first woman in the world to be appointed to a University chair to teach “universal philosophy” (1732) and then “experimental physics” (1776). On the occasion of the tercentenary of her birth, the University of Bologna organisedanexhibition,anumberoflecturesandaconference,andtheAccademia itself established a “Forum Laura Bassi” which since then, every year, focuses on themes of topical interest. On the same occasion, the Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF) and the Società Italiana di Storia della Scienza (SISS) have taken the ini- tiative—incidentally,beingbothledthenbyfemaleprofessorsoftheUniversityof BolognaandatthesametimemembersoftheAccademia—topublishavolumeon Laura Bassi topay a tribute to herin a way that would leave alastingmemoryfor the future and could mark a starting point to promote further analyses. And so the idea of the volume “LAURA BASSI: EMBLEM AND PRIMACY IN SETTECENTO SCIENCE” was born. This volume, appeared in 2012, was a col- lection of writingsby various experts which aimed to illustrate the personality and work of Laura Bassi, as well as the characters who most influenced her education andherresearchactivity,and,atthesametime,tounderlinethemainfeaturesofthe physics of the eighteenth century in the frame of which this scientist operated. To make it easier to read and to foster the widest possible circulation, the volume consistedinanItalianversionatthebeginningandanEnglishtranslationattheend. A plentiful selection of attractive and telling pictures of the epoch, pertaining to Laura Bassi, the scientific context of the time and particularly the instrumentation referred to in the various essays, provided a lively and colourful interval in the passage from one language to the other. A few years later, in 2019, a “Laura Bassi Medal”, intended for its most mer- itoriousPhDgraduates,hasbeenestablishedbytheUniversityofBologna(among othersimilarmedalsnamedafterPetrarch,Copernicus,AccursiusandMarconi).In 2019,thenewicebreakershipoftheIstitutoNazionalediOceanografiaeGeofisica Sperimentale(OGS)forscientificresearchintheAntarctichasbeennamed“Laura v vi Preface Bassi”. And in 2020, a special documentary dedicated to Laura Bassi has been produced,1whichwillbebroadcastonthemajorItaliannationaltelevisionchannel in the framework of the very popular and renowned show “RAI Storia”. Foralltheabove,theSIF,incollaborationwithSpringer,hasdecidedtopublish thepresentvolumeintheSpringerBiographiesseries,asanewrevisedandupdated edition of the previous one, in order to revamp and widen the knowledge of this extraordinary woman. The book opens with an essay by Walter Tega who examines in an innovative waythedistinguishedfigureofLuigiFerdinandoMarsili,scientist,oceanographer, soldier, member of the Royal Society and well known in Europe precisely for his exceptionalgiftsasanaturalist,theguidingspiritbehindthecreationoftheIstituto delle Scienze which was founded in 1711 when its Costituzioni were approved on 12 December. The project devised by Marsili was ambitious and original, aiming tohouse the entire encyclopedia of modern scientific knowledge in the rooms of an ancient senatorialresidenceinBologna.Aseriesoflaboratories, galleries,workshops,laid out over the two floors of Palazzo Poggi (to which must be added the Specola (Observatory),designedin1711andonlycompletedin1726,andthelibrary,built accordingtoadesignbyCarloFrancescoDotti,createdaccordingtothewishesof PopeProsperoLambertiniinthemiddleofthecentury),madetheIstituto,fromits very beginning, not just a place for discussion similar to that offered by the numerous scientific academies active within the République des Lettres, but also a venue where the sciences could be cultivated experimentally, an unquestionably rarer thing. It was also Lambertini, first as archbishop of Bologna and then as Pope Benedict XIV, who supported Marsili’s enterprise and relaunched it in the Europe oftheAgeofReason.TheguidelinesforreformsuggestedfortheIstitutoandtoits Accademia, the considerable increase in its resources, to the library, to the col- lections,totheequipmentofthelaboratories,theboldexpansionofthenetworkof foreign correspondents, the need felt by the Roman Curia to enhance scientific knowledge, at an institutional level too, at the most acute phase of the harsh anti-religious controversy opened up by the Enlightenment, constituted the frameworkwithinwhichmenofsciencelikeManfredi,Zanotti,Molinelli,Beccari, Galeazzi and their pupils Laura Bassi, Leopoldo Caldani and Luigi Galvani cap- tured an eminent position in the scientific culture of the eighteenth century. This experimental activity and the empirical observational method formed the inheritance that Marsili left to the Istituto and that we encounter in Laura Bassi enriched with a new method to conceive the teaching of physics, typical of the eighteenth century. As said, Laura Bassi was born in Bologna in 1711. Her father Giuseppe was a lawyer fromScandiano,andherfirstteacherwas acousin,fatherLorenzo Stegani, who taught her grammar, Latin, French and arithmetic; she then studied natural 1The documentary is sponsored by the Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “EnricoFermi”,theSocietàItalianadiFisicaandtheUniversityofBologna. Preface vii philosophy with a doctor, Gaetano Tacconi, who was lecturer of medicine at the University and a member of the Accademia delle Scienze. From 1731, the archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Lambertini, was one of her supporters: since then, he followed her progress in her studies, becoming her strongest and most authoritative patron. On 20 March 1732, she was named honorary member of the Accademia delle Scienze;on17Aprilofthesameyear,shepresentedherthesisinpublic,aswasthe customatthetime,andon12May,shewasawardedadegreeinphilosophy.On29 October, she obtained ex officio from the Senate a post to teach universal philos- ophy, also due to pressure from Lambertini, regularly salaried by the University. Her public role became that of woman prodigy, equipped with an intelligence thatwasextraordinaryinthatshewasawoman,awondertobeshownoff;herfame also reflected on her city, Bologna. Laura showed herself in the most prestigious culturalvenues,suchastheArchiginnasioandtheAccademiadelleScienze,always on occasions of events accompanied by splendour, magnificence and by immense social and political participation. Byhermarriagein1738toGiuseppeVeratti,adoctorandexpertinphysics,her authoritative colleague at the University and in the Academy, she had eight chil- dren, five of whom survived. In1745,shebecameamemberoftheBenedictineAcademy:itwasBassiherself who persuaded the pope to create a supernumerary twenty-fifth place designed for her,inadditiontothatbody’srolloftwenty-fourmembers.Withthisappointment, although again she was not guaranteed parity in terms of the rights enjoyed by the other members of the Academy, she achieved the highest recognition for her sci- entific activity. From 1749, she organised, with her husband’s help, a private school of exper- imentalphysicsinherhome,withcoursesthatwereimbuedwithNewton’smethod. In the Verattis’ laboratory, where the couple carried out their most original investigations including the medical use of electricity, experiments were also conducted by the doctor of medicine from Bologna Leopoldo Caldani and the naturalist Felice Fontana from Trento, disciples of the new theories on muscular irritability put forward by the Swiss naturalist Albrecht von Haller. The laboratory hadthenecessaryinstrumentsavailableforthepreparationofLaura’sreportstothe Academy and for the debate she engaged in, by correspondence, with scientists such as Antoine Nollet, Giovanni Battista Beccaria, Felice Fontana and Lazzaro Spallanzani. Her scientific interests ranged from optics to analytical mechanics, to hydrom- etry, to electrology, to pneumatic physics and chemistry. She began to study Newtonianphysicsandinfinitesimal calculuswithJacopoBartolomeoBeccariand Gabriele Manfredi: research that would allow her both to offer her own students innovative courses in experimental physics and also to become one of the pro- tagonists in the acceptance and circulation of Newton’s theories in Italy. From the sixties, her overwhelming curiosity was in the field of electrical phe- nomena, as can be inferred from the titles of some of her communications in this field of study—now unfortunately lost—and the exchange of letters with some viii Preface of the greatest specialists in this sphere. Only four of Laura Bassi’s memoirs presented to the Accademia delle Scienze in Bologna, in which she dealt with questionsofhydrometry,mechanicsandpneumaticphysics,havecomedowntous. In1766,shewasappointedtoteachexperimentalphysicsattheCollegioMontalto. In1776,shewasgiventhepostofprofessorofexperimentalphysicsattheIstituto delleScienze,withherhusbandasher“substitute”.Itwashewhowouldreplaceher there on her death in 1778. Coming back to our volume, with regard to Newton’s theories we turn to the lucidcontributionbyNiccolòGuicciardiniwho,afteranacuteanalysisofthemain aspectsandproblemsofthese theories, whichNewtonhimselfleft ashislegacy to thescientificcommunity,pointsouthowLauraBassi’sphysics,whileappearingon the one hand to be influenced by Newton’s Opticks and Queries, reveals on the otherhandastrongfascinationwithmathematicalphysicsinspiredbythePrincipia. The Queries, as is well known, are “open questions” that Newton left as if he wanted tosuggestlinesofresearchstilltobecompleted.Inparticular,itshouldbe noted that the Queries that Newton had stressed with regard to chemical and electrical phenomena showed an attention for the phenomena of perception and volition,thatistosayforvitalphenomena,anattentionsharedbytheBassi-Veratti couple. In conclusion, it can be claimed that Laura Bassi and the Italian eighteenth-centuryNewtonianscientistsfullyacceptedtheopennatureofNewton's legacy, carrying out wide-ranging research to this aim. Theaccurateandwell-documentedcontributionbySofiaTalasspecificallydeals withSettecentophysicsandelucidatessomeimportantchoicesofLauraBassi.Sofia Talas, on the basis of a long excursus on the history of the importance of instru- ments in physics since Galileo Galilei, brings to light, among other things, the extraordinary success enjoyed from this point of view by the introduction of electricity, in laboratories, in academic circles and even in salons. It was in this context that Laura Bassi also began to work on electricity, so much so that the already mentioned Antoine Nollet, a well-known figure in this field, met her at BolognaduringhisjourneytoItalyin1749,remainingincorrespondencewithher. Nollet dedicated to her one of his Lettres sur l’électricité published between 1753 and1767, inwhichhepresentedhis mostrecent experiments andhis own theories on electricity. Paula Findlen’s essay, with the significant title Amongst Men, provides the central theme of the book since it tells in detail the intricate and difficult story of “Signora Laura”, a scientist certainly but also the only woman amongst men, University teachers and members of the Academy. One of these men, the medical doctor Giovanni Bianchi from Rimini, a remarkablefigureinItalianeighteenth-centuryculture,onseveraloccasionsshowed a special sensibility towards female involvement in the scientific community, as Miriam Focaccia. accurately explains in her article. Focaccia stresses that personal relationships and correspondence with several female exponents of the culture of the time were of particular interest, including the mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi from Milan and, above all, the two women from Bologna Anna Morandi Manzolini, the anatomist, and, of course, Laura Bassi. Preface ix Finally, the laboratory of the Bassi-Veratti couple illustrated by Marta Cavazza is linked to Findlen’s essay, showing once again Bassi’s innovative teaching and the experimental spirit of the institute which remained intact in her. Laurathescientistwasanemblem,aniconicfigure:then,asawoman,aprimacy and arole model.Betweenwomen,betweenfemalescientists, we understand each other; for that very reason we wanted to introduce to a wider public in Italy and abroad, not just symbolically, the extraordinary intellectual legacy that she left us from that distant and marvellous period that was the Settecento. University of Bologna Luisa Cifarelli January 2020 Raffaella Simili
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