[154] Ernesto Masi, Studi e Ritratti, p. 166 et seq., Bologna, 1881.
[155] Two of her Latin dissertations on certain physical problems were published in the Commentaries of the Bologna Institute. One of them is entitled De Problemate quodam Mechanico; the other De Problemate quodam Hydrometrico. Many of her lectures on physics still exist in manuscript, and it is to be hoped that at least the titles of them may be given in a biography of the learned author which has been long desired and long promised.
[156] Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, Vol. I, p. 363, 1869.
[157] As no satisfactory biography of Laura Bassi has yet been written, most of our knowledge respecting her is limited to that found in Fantuzzi's Notizie degli Scrittori Bolognesi, Tom. I, pp. 384-391, and Mazzuchelli's Gli Scrittori d'Italia, Vol. II, Part I, pp. 527-529, Brescia, 1758.
CHAPTER VI
WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY
The first woman deserving special mention in the history of chemistry is the wife of the immortal Lavoisier, the most famous of the founders of modern chemical science. While yet in her teens, this remarkable woman gave evidence of exceptional intelligence and will power. She was thoroughly devoted to her husband, and had the greatest admiration for his genius. Her highest ambition was to prove herself worthy of him and to render herself competent to assist him in those investigations that have given him such imperishable renown. With this end in view, she learned Latin and English, and she thus became an accomplished translator from these languages of any chemical works which might aid her spouse in his epoch-making researches. It was she who translated for him the chemical memoirs of Cavendish, Henry, Kirwan, Priestly and other noted English scientific investigators.
Arthur Young, well known in his day as a traveler and author, who in 1787 made the acquaintance of Madame Lavoisier, describes her as a woman full of animation, good sense and knowledge. In referring to a breakfast she had given him, he declares that "unquestionably the best part of the repast was her conversation on Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston, which she was then translating, and on other subjects which a woman of sense, working in the laboratory of her husband, knows so well how to make interesting."