Today, May 16, is the 308th anniversary of the birth of Maria Gaetana Agnesi. I'm happy to see many more posts about her on social media, including one that featured this image on X recently:
Unfortunately, the text that accompanied the image repeated one of the common myths about Maria, that she was a math professor. As I explained in this post from 2019, although Pope Benedict XIV did indeed offer Maria a math professorship at the University of Bologna, she turned it down and never served there. In fact, she probably never set foot in Bologna.
It's sad to see that the misinformation about Maria Gaetana Agnesi continues to be spread. I keep trying to set the record straight whenever I can.
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