Celebrating Maria's Birthday with Another Honor

Today is the 305th anniversary of the birth of Maria Gaetana Agnesi! I'm happy to share that she received another honor just last month: a satellite named for her. 

On April 14, 2023, Satellogic Inc. deployed four new satellites named for women in STEM, including one honoring Maria. Here is an excerpt from the Satellogic, Inc. announcement:  

The SpaceX Transporter-7 mission was completed Friday, April 14, with a two-stage rocket delivering the four satellites designed and built by Satellogic to orbit. The NewSat Mark-IV models include multispectral cameras designed to collect high-resolution imagery from sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit. Satellogic continued its celebrated tradition of naming satellites after remarkable women in STEM and has named these four spacecraft after Joan Clarke, Annie Jump Cannon, Tikvah Alper, and
Maria Gaetana Agnesi.

For the complete list of the women honored to date, see this page of the Satellogic website.

Happy birthday, Maria!

Sharing Another Monument to Maria on International Women's Day

On May 16, 2017, the 300th anniversary of Maria Gaetana Agnesi's birth, she was featured as the "Scientist of the Day" on the Linda Hall Library website. The article, which was written by Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City, includes several interesting photos related to Maria and her life. The final photo is a bust of Maria that is featured on the side of Milan's Palazzo Brentani:

Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Detail from the series of decorative busts (portraying "distinguished Italians") on the facade Palazzo Brentani, in via Manzoni street at Milan. Picture by Giovanni Dall'Orto, April 14 2007.

Here's Professor Ashworth's description of the bust:

"The Palazzo Brentani in Milan has a series of 18 portrait plaques that circle the exterior, celebrating important citizens of Milan. Front and foremost, right over the entrance, is Leonardo da Vinci ... , but in the second-best spot, just to the viewer’s left of Leonardo, is a plaque for Agnesi ...."

I'm highlighting the image here today in honor of International Women's Day and Women's History Month. This is the perfect time to remember Maria Gaetana Agnesi and all the other unsung women of history.  

For additional photos of Palazzo Brentani, see this page in Wikimedia Commons.

Quick Fun Fact About Maria Gaetana Agnesi

I usually post about the myths associated with Maria Gaetana Agnesi and her family. But today I thought I'd share a fun fact: there's a crater on Venus named in Maria's honor. While I couldn't find a good image of the crater to share, here's one of the planet Venus:

From nasa.gov

You can read more about the crater here.

According to the MacTutor site, two other female mathematicians have Venus craters named for them: Émilie du Châtelet and Sophie Germain. 

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Carmela

Two Postage Stamps Honoring Maria Gaetana Agnesi

In May 2018, I shared about some of the events being held in honor of Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 300th birthday.  But it wasn't until recently that I learned of additional events commemorating the anniversary: two postage stamps were issued to honor Maria, one by the Italian government and the other by the Vatican.

The stamp issued by the Italian government is one of a set of four celebrating “Italian Female Genius." Agnesi's stamp includes a graph of the "witch of Agnesi" curve named for her. She didn't invent the curve, and the name was the result of a mistranslation. See this post to read more about that.

 

According to WitchOfAgnesi.org, a website devoted to information about Agnesi, the Vatican issued an Agnesi stamp to recognize her as an "outstanding mathematician and impassioned Catholic." The Witch of Agnesi website was established by California State University mathematics professor Shirley Gray, a long-time advocate for recognizing Agnesi's contributions to mathematics. The Vatican stamp depicts Maria in prayer, but it also includes the witch of Agnesi curve on a sheet of paper lying on the floor beside her. 

 

I'm thrilled to see Maria Gaetana Agnesi honored in this way--it was long overdue!