Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

It must not, however, be inferred from the foregoing statements regarding the great intellectual capacity of Laura Bassi or the enthusiastic demonstrations that were so frequently made in her honor that she was unique in this respect among her countrywomen. Special attention has been called to her as a type of the large number of her sex who, by their learning and culture, graced the courts and honored the universities of her country for full ten centuries. Scarcely had death removed Laura Bassi from a career in which for twenty-eight years she had won the plaudits of the whole of Europe, when the University of Bologna welcomed to its learned halls two other women who, in their respective lines of research, were fully as eminent as their departed countrywoman. These were Maria dalle Donne, for whom Napoleon established a chair of obstetrics, and Clotilda Tambroni, the famous professor of Greek, of whom a noted Hellenist declared, "Only three persons in Europe are able to write Greek as well as she does, and not more than fifteen are able to understand her."

Burckhardt, in his thoughtful work on the culture of the Italian Renaissance, has a paragraph which expresses, in a few words, what was always the attitude of the Italian father toward the education of his daughter.

"The education of the woman of the upper class was absolutely the same as that of the man. The Italian of the Renaissance did not for a moment hesitate to give his son and daughter the same literary and philosophical training. He considered the knowledge of the works of antiquity life's greatest good, and he could not, therefore, deny to woman participation in such knowledge. Hence the perfection attained by the daughters of noble families in writing and speaking Latin."[156]

This attitude of the members of the nobility toward the education of their daughters was essentially the same as that of the universities of Italy toward women who had a thirst for knowledge. For from the dawn of learning in Salerno to the present there never was a time when women were not as cordially welcomed to the universities as students and professors as were the men; and never a time when the merit of intellectual work was not determined without regard to sex.

In Bologna, where were passed the sixty-seven years of her mortal life, the name of Laura Bassi, like that of her illustrious colleague, Luigi Galvani, is one to conjure with, and a name that is still pronounced with respect and reverence. Her last resting place is in the Church of Corpus Domini, the same sacred shrine in which were deposited all that was mortal of the renowned discoverer of galvanic electricity.[157]

Two years after Signora Bassi was gathered to her fathers there was born near Edinburgh to a Scotch admiral, Sir William George Fairfax, an infant daughter who was destined to shed as much luster on her sex in the British Isles as the incomparable Laura Bassi had diffused on womankind in Italy during her brilliant career in "Bologna, the learned." She is known in the annals of science as Mary Somerville, and was in every way a worthy successor of her famous sister in Italy, both as a woman and as a votary of science.

Although her chief title to fame is her notable work in mathematical astronomy, especially her translation of Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, she is likewise to be accorded a prominent place among scientific investigators for her contributions to physics and cognate branches of knowledge. Chief among these are her works on the Connection of the Physical Sciences and Physical Geography. As to the last production, no less an authority than Alexander von Humboldt pronounced it an exact and admirable treatise, and wrote of it as "that excellent work which has charmed and instructed me since its first appearance."

In a letter from the illustrious German savant to the gifted authoress of the two last-named volumes occurs the following paragraph: "To the great superiority you possess and which has so nobly illustrated your name on the high regions of mathematical analysis, you add, Madam, a variety of information in all parts of physics and descriptive natural history. After the Mechanism of the Heavens, the philosophical Connection of the Physical Sciences has been the object of my profound admiration.... The author of the vast Cosmos should more than any one else salute the Physical Geography of Mary Somerville.... I know of no work on physical geography in any language that can compare with yours."

Among the other works by Mrs. Somerville, treating of physical subjects or of subjects intimately related to physics are The Form and Rotation of the Earth, The Tides of the Ocean and Atmosphere, and an abstruse investigation On Molecular and Microscopic Science. The last volume was published in 1869, when its author was near her ninetieth year, and bore as its motto St. Augustine's sublime words: Deus magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis—God is great in great things, greatest in the least.