Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Maria Agnesi was an Italian mathematician who is noted for her work in differential calculus. She discussed the cubic curve now known as the ‘witch of Agnesi’.
Category Archives: Philosophy
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Laura Bassi
Laura Bassi was an Italian physicist and one of the earliest women to gain a position in an Italian university.
Hypatia
Hypatia of Alexandria (370-416), a mathematician and philosopher, one of the most eminent women teachers of antiquity, and one of the ablest of the later Greeks who preached the pagan philosophy.
Aspasia
By her great eloquence, political and literary ability and personal fascination, she at once obtained a commanding position among the leaders of the state, and gained the affections of Pericles, the ruler of Athens.
Catharine Beecher
A member of a prominent activist and religious family, Catharine Esther Beecher was a nineteenth century teacher and writer who promoted equal access to education for women and advocated for their roles as teachers and mothers. Embracing traits associated with femininity such as nurturance, Beecher argued that women were uniquely suited to the moral and intellectual development of children, either as mothers or as educators.
Jane Addams
A progressive social reformer and activist, Jane Addams was on the frontline of the settlement house movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She later became internationally respected for the peace activism that ultimately won her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to receive this honor.
Mercy Otis Warren
Mercy Otis Warren was a published poet, political playwright and satirist during the age of the American Revolution—a time when women were encouraged and expected to keep silent on political matters. Warren not only engaged with the leading figures of the day—such as John, Abigail, and Samuel Adams—but she became an outspoken commentator and historian, as well as the leading female intellectual of the Revolution and early republic.
Themistoclea
Themistoclea was a priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and Pythagoras’s teacher.