Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Italian mathematician and philanthropist (1718–1799)

  • Fame60.4
  • Momentum1.7
  • Wikipedia5.2K
Source-basedFalling
Lived 1718–1799, aged 81Italy
  • Wikipedia
    73 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1718–1799
    Aged 81
Summary
Updated 2026-06-10

She wrote the first comprehensive calculus textbook in any language, earned a university appointment no woman had held before, then walked away from mathematics entirely to spend forty years caring for the poor.

Biography

About

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan on 16 May 1718, the elder sister of composer Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini. She produced the first handbook covering both differential and integral calculus, a text that made her the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor — at the University of Bologna, though she never took the post. After her groundbreaking work in mathematics and philosophy, she turned fully toward theology, immersing herself in patristics and writing essays like Il cielo mistico, where she argued that rational contemplation of God and mystical prayer were not opposed but int…

Where to find them

Platforms

No platforms connected yet.

By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
60.4
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum1.7
Historical24.0
Now attention1.8
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence