New Edition of Playing By Heart is an Amazon #1 release

Monday, September 8, 2025, was the "book birthday" for a new edition of Playing by Heart, my award-winning historical novel inspired by the lives of Maria Gaetana Agnesi and Maria Teresa Agnesi. This edition now includes Book Discussion Questions in the back of the book. I've also made some updates to the cover to distinguish this edition from copies of the older one that may still be available for purchase online. This cover has the title in a new blue font and includes an excerpt from the novel's Booklist review beneath the title. 

 

I was quite surprised to discover today that the book is currently listed as an Amazon "Hot New Release" and the #1 New Release in Children's European Biographies. I don't know how this happened, since the book isn't really a biography. But it is fun to see all the same. 

 

 

More appropriately, Playing by Heart is also listed as a best seller in the "Teen & Young Adult European Biographical Fiction" category, where it's currently #8!

 

 

I have other exciting news about this edition that I'll share in a future post. Meanwhile, you can read more about it and find buy links for purchasing the new edition on the book's page of my website. 
 

 

     

 

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.

Myth-busting and Celebrating on Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 303rd Birthday

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Maria Gaetana Agnesi in Milan, Italy, on May 16, 1718. Sadly, many myths continue to be perpetuated about Maria. Just yesterday, I found a site that offers a "library of teaching worksheets" for classroom use called KidsConnect. At first, I was pleased to see they include a set of worksheets about Maria. But when I read the sample information, I found it riddled with errors. For example, it includes what I called Myth #1 in one of my earliest posts on this site: "Her father, Pietro Agnesi, was a math professor at the University of Bologna." I debunk that myth here. 

Another myth on the KidsConnect page is "Maria’s mother’s death made her retire from public life. She stayed at home and manage [sic] the house, and she was the eldest of 21 children." The page also says: "Aside from completing her own lessons and performances, she was also responsible for teaching her siblings. This task kept her from achieving her own goal of entering a convent, as she had become extremely religious." I explain the error behind statements like these in this blog post. 

I'm especially troubled that these myths are part of information sheets used to instruct children about Maria Gaetana Agnesi. I don't know about the worksheets themselves, but the sample information on the KidsConnect website does not cite any sources. From what I read there, the "facts" seem to have been copied from the Wikipedia entry for Maria Gaetana Agnesi. While Wikipedia does include source references, those sources are unreliable and contain misinformation. That's how these myths keep getting perpetuated. I have sent a message to KidsConnect regarding these issues. We'll see if they respond.

I still hope to publish a nonfiction biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi for young readers that will provide the true story of her life. Meanwhile, I recommend these two references for the most accurate information we have about Maria:

    A Biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, an Eighteenth-Century Woman Mathematician by Antonella Cupillari
    The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God by Massimo Mazzotti (You can follow him on Twitter @maxmazzotti)

On a positive note, today I discovered that the Remarkablz site celebrated Maria with a fun Science Superhero Identity and a game card in their Top Quarkz game. You can read all about it here.  

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Women's History Month 2021

I've mentioned here before that my historical novel, Playing by Heart, was inspired by Maria Gaetana and Maria Teresa Agnesi. Women's History Month feels like an appropriate time to again celebrate the lives of these amazing sisters. 

The novel’s original title was The Second Salvini Sister. I based my main character, Emilia Salvini, on composer Maria Teresa Agnesi, and I gave Emilia an older sister, Maria, who was modeled on Maria Gaetana. I incorporated several events from the Agnesi sisters’ lives into the story. For example, the scene in Chapter Five where Maria Salvini gives a speech defending the education of women is based on Maria Gaetana’s first public speech at age nine. Young Maria Gaetana had translated the speech into Latin herself. She had to overcome her natural shyness when she recited the long speech from memory before a gathering of Milan's aristocracy on August 18, 1727.    

Empress Maria Theresa, 1759

Another real-life event I wanted to include in the novel was a 1739 visit to Milan by future Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The Empress is obviously a much more well known figure in women's history.

I was thrilled to find a primary source describing the then-archduchess's only visit to the city. Translating a document written in eighteenth-century Italian proved painstaking. Still, it was worth the effort. The document contained wonderful details that helped add authenticity to Playing by Heart. 

I learned that Archduchess Maria Theresa participated in the Ritual of the Holy Nail at the Duomo Cathedral in May 1739. The ritual is still performed annually in Milan. You can watch video clips of the ceremony on YouTube. You’ll find a brief overview with English narration here or the full ceremony in Italian here. 

Here’s an excerpt from the scene in the novel describing the ritual:

“My first glimpse of the archduchess came the next day, which happened to be the Feast of the Cross. Our family joined the crowd inside the Duomo to participate in the twice-yearly ritual of the Holy Nail, a relic believed to be one of the nails from the cross of Christ. The Nail is stored in a crystal case set in the center of an enormous gold cross suspended high inside the cathedral’s dome. The cross can only be reached via the Nivola—a mechanical, cloud-shaped lift said to have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The lift sits behind the Duomo’s main altar. From where we stood, I could see neither the Nivola nor the three cathedral priests who climbed into it.”

I loved incorporating real events involving notable women of history into my novel. I hope Playing by Heart inspires readers to learn more about these amazing women.

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!

Maria Gaetana Agnesi Biography on MacTutor Site

There's a great deal of misinformation about Maria Gaetana Agnesi online. One of the reasons I created this site was to point out some of those errors. Today, though, I'd like to share a website that sticks to the facts: the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. The site is hosted by the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. I was pleased to discover that the MacTutor biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi is based on information from reputable sources, and it includes a list of those sources.

Here's the portrait of Maria included in the MacTutor bio (which is in the public domain):

I commend Edmund Robertson and John O'Connor, the creators of MacTutor, for a job well done!

Celebrating Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 300th Birthday!

May 16, 2018 is the 300th birthday of mathematician-turned-humanitarian Maria Gaetana Agnesi. But Milan, Italy, her birthplace, has special events planned in her honor all year long, including a  program sponsored by Poleticnico Milano on April 19. If you can read Italian, check out the impressive program here. 

Since my research into Maria Gaetana Agnesi's life led me to write the novel Playing by Heart, inspired by her and her younger sister, Maria Teresa Agnesi, I think it only appropriate to sponsor a giveaway of the novel to celebrate this momentous birthday. See my website for details.

I hope that by Maria Gaetana Agnesi's next birthday, I will have found a publisher for the biography I'm working on about her. Meanwhile, happy birthday, Maria!

International Women's Day 2018

Today, March 8, is International Women's Day. 

I can't think of a better day to celebrate the two, relatively unknown,
18th-century sisters who inspired my historical novel Playing by Heart. The sisters are linguist, mathematician, and humanitarian Maria Gaetana Agnesi and musician and composer Maria Teresa Agnesi.

I started this website back in 2010 to debunk some of the myths surrounding the two sisters, especially those about Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Unfortunately, eight years later, there's still an amazing amount of misinformation about the family that continues to be disseminated both in print and online. One of the most annoying myths, in my opinion, is that the father of the Agnesi sisters was a mathematics professor. I discussed this myth back in June, 2010. I'd been pleased at that time to see that the error had been corrected in the Wikipedia entry about Maria Gaetana. Unfortunately, since then, someone has updated the Wikipedia entry so that it is now wrong again!

I still hope to eventually publish a nonfiction biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi for students ages 10 and up that will provide the true story of her life, as best we can put together. Meanwhile, I recommend these two references for the most accurate information we have regarding Maria Gaetana specifically and her family in general:

• A Biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, an Eighteenth-Century Woman Mathematician by Antonella Cupillari
• The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God by Massimo Mazzotti (You can follow him on Twitter @maxmazzotti)

The best information I’ve found regarding Maria Teresa Agnesi and her music is in Volumes 3 and 4 of Women Composers: Music through the Ages, edited by Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer.

I include these references in the Author's Note of my novel Playing by Heart. As I shared here recently, I'm currently offering a special giveaway in honor of Women's History Month. You can read the giveaway details as well as download an excerpt from the novel on this page of my website.

Happy International Women's Day!

Women's History Month 2018

     Today kicks off Women's History Month. I learned a great deal about women's history while researching Playing by Heart. The novel was inspired by the two eldest Agnesi sisters: accomplished musician and composer Maria Teresa Agnesi and her older sister, linguist, mathematician, and humanitarian Maria Gaetana Agnesi. You can read more about Maria Teresa on her page of this site and about Maria Gaetana on her bio page.

     The six-month anniversary of the release of Playing by Heart also occurs later this month. It's hard to believe the book has already been out almost six months! To celebrate, I'm hosting a special "Book Bag & Swag" giveaway on my website. You can find all the details here.

 

Playing by Heart Book Birthday

Playing by Heart, my young-adult historical romance inspired by the lives of Maria Gaetana Agnesi and her sister, Maria Teresa Agnesi, was published today by Vinspire Publishing. Here's a brief plot summary:

Emilia Salvini dreams of marrying a man who loves music as she does. But in 18th-century Milan, being the 'second sister' means she'll likely be sent to a convent instead. Emilia's only hope is to prove her musical talents crucial to her father's quest for nobility. First, though, she must win over her music tutor, who disdains her simply for being a girl. Too late, Emilia realizes that her success could threaten not only her dreams but her sister's very life.

At its core, Playing by Heart is the story of two sisters struggling to follow their true calling, even when it conflicts with their father's goals. It's a clean historical romance appropriate for ages 12 and up.

The early reviews are quite positive. Booklist called the novel a "sweet and pleasurable read," saying also:

"Martino's romantic read features lovable characters

and is vibrant in setting and detail."

—Booklist

And DePaul University Education Professor Roxanne Owens called the novel "a must-read addition for school libraries everywhere." You can read more review excerpts on my website.

To celebrate the book's "birthday" today, I made some panettone, which you can see below. This Italian sweet bread is said to have originated in Milan, the novel's setting.

To watch the book's trailer and enter a giveaway to win a free autographed copy, see my post on TeachingAuthors.com.

I've set up a number of events to celebrate the book's release, both in the Chicago area and online. For details about those, see this page of my website.

Happy 299th Birthday, Maria Gaetana Agnesi!

We're one year away from commemorating the 300th anniversary of Maria Gaetana Agnesi's birth! While I have yet to find a publisher for the nonfiction biography I've written about her, I'm thrilled to announce the forthcoming release of a young-adult historical romance inspired by the lives of Maria Gaetana and her younger sister, musician and composer Maria Teresa Agnesi. The novel, called Playing by Heart, will be published by Vinspire Publishing this September. I'll be sharing the cover here as soon as it's available. Meanwhile, I'm using this lovely congratulations card a friend made to inspire me as we work on final edits:

I'll also be updating the "About Maria Teresa" page of this site as soon as I get a chance.

Meanwhile, if you'd like more frequent updates about Playing by Heart and my other projects, I encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter. You can do so in the right sidebar of my website.

Happy birthday, Maria Gaetana Agnesi!

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born on this day in 1718. If you're not familiar with this amazing woman's story, you can read about her on the About Maria page, as well as in all the other posts on this blog.

I forgot to mention in my last post that in addition to working on a biography of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, I'm also writing a young adult historical romance based on her life and that of her composer sister, Maria Teresa. Thanks to the Internet, you can now hear some of Maria Teresa's compositions for yourself, including this one:

You can also read about her here. 

Enjoy!

Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 297th Birthday

As I explained several years ago, I've suspended regular posts to this blog. But I do like to take time once a year to acknowledge Maria Gaetana Agnesi's birthday. This year, I'm happy to note that after a long hiatus, I've returned to working on a biography for children about this intriguing woman. Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, I received an email asking for the names of Maria's siblings. I mentioned in my last post that, as far as we know, she had twenty siblings in all. We also know that one of Maria's sisters, Maria Teresa Agnesi, was an accomplished musician and composer. I mentioned her briefly in this post. You can read about her here.

Maria Teresa Agnesi, younger sister of Maria Gaetana Agnesi

I won't list the names of Maria Gaetana Agnesi's other siblings here. For that information, I suggest you read one of the published book-length biographies of her. I'm not going to do all your research for you!  

Happy birthday, Maria Gaetana Agnesi!

A Birthday Present for Maria from the Writer's Almanac

This blog continues to be on hold, as I explained in this post. However, I do want to remind everyone that today is 

Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 295th birthday!

And what better present than an accurate write-up about her in today's Writer's Almanac!

You may recall that on this day in 2011, the Writer's Almanac got her bio wrong, repeating one of the many myths about Maria: that she couldn't become a nun because she had to care for her many younger siblings. As I explained in this post:

While it is true that Maria was shy and devout, her mother's death did not cause her to give up her religious aspirations. She was only 13 when her mother died. Maria may have helped out with her siblings for awhile, but by the time she turned 16, her father had remarried. The reasons for her not entering a convent had nothing to do with her mother's death.

In 2011, I sent the people at Writer's Almanac a note pointing out their mistake. I'm glad to see they've corrected the error.

Happy birthday, Maria! Or, as they say in Italy:

A Not So Pleasant Birthday Present: The Writer's Almanac Gets it Wrong

Although this blog is officially "on hold," I thought I'd take a quick moment to acknowledge Maria Gaetana Agnesi's birthday, and to correct some misinformation posted about her today at The Writer's Almanac. According to the almanac:

"Maria was shy and devout, and she longed to give up her public speaking and enter a convent. Her religious aspirations were dashed, however, when her mother died and she was left in charge of the household and the care of her many siblings."

This information contains another common myth about Maria: that she had to care for her siblings after her mother died. While it is true that Maria was shy and devout, her mother's death did not cause her to give up her religious aspirations. She was only 13 when her mother died. Maria may have helped out with her siblings for awhile, but by the time she turned 16, her father had remarried. The reasons for her not entering a convent had nothing to do with her mother's death.

I guess even inaccurate publicity is better than no publicity, though. I commend The Writer's Almanac for highlighting the fact that today is the anniversary of Maria Gaetana Agnesi's birthday: May 16, 1718.
Sitll, I consider it ironic that they begin their post by saying:

"It is the birthday of one of the first well-known female mathematicians of the Western world."

While Maria Gaetana Agnesi may have been well-known in her day, few people today have ever heard of her.  I hope that I can help change that by finding a publisher for my manuscript. In the meantime:

Happy Birthday, Maria,

or as they say in Italy:

Myth #1: Maria's Father was a Math Professor

Myth: Maria Gaetana Agnesi's father was a math professor at the University of Bologna.

Fact: Pietro Agnesi was not a professor, or even a mathematician. As far as we know, he never even lived in Bologna. He was born into a family of wealthy silk merchants, but he may never have worked in the family business. Pietro Agnesi enjoyed socializing with scholars and noblemen. Some believe he educated Maria, and her younger sister, Teresa, to increase his own popularity in the upper class.

The myth that Maria's father was a professor continues to be published on the Internet (see About.com, for example) and in print references. [Wikipedia originally had it wrong, too, but they have since updated their information. However, there are other errors in their entry that I'll be addressing later.] This particular myth minimizes Maria's accomplishments in the field of mathematics--it's not as impressive for an 18th-century woman to have excelled in math if her father was a mathematician.

Here's another fact: By age fourteen, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was tackling tough problems in geometry and ballistics—the science of the flight patterns of bullets and cannonballs.  (The following image is courtesy of Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse.)

For an explanation of this drawing, along with original source information, see the description at the bottom of this page.

Ballistics was a most unusual topic for an eighteenth-century girl to study--few girls could even read or write at that time! Maria was likely fascinated by math, and that's why she focused on it the way she did. Not because of her father's knowledge of the subject. However, he was the one who allowed her to study and he provided her with the best tutors.

Have you come across this myth about Maria? If so, please post a comment telling me where. I'll try to contact the source to set the record straight.