Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born on May 16, 1718, the first of 21 children.  Her parents were wealthy merchants.  Her father discovered that she had an excellent memory at a young age, so he trained her in different languages, namely Latin, and would take her to "academic evenings" he often attended where she would have debates with learned guests on philosophic and scientific topics.  There was a decade in her life where she focused her studies strictly on math.  In 1735 she corresponded with her teacher Carlo Belloni about a diffculty in Guillaume Francois de L'Hopital's treatise on conic sections.On March 19, 1752 her father died, and she shifted her focus from math to theology and gave her time, money and effort to devotional and charitable activites.  Early years of intense study appear to have affectd Agnesi's health as an adolescent.  Her doctor at the time apparently prescribed more physical exercise including dancing and horseback riding.  Despite her delicate health and the voluntary privations of her of her later life, she continued to be physically active, although there was a decline in her later years, when she gradually grew blind and deaf.  The name of Agnesi is most often recalled today in connection with the Curve of Agnesi, known in English texts as the Witch of Agnesi.

Author: Ester Landin

References:
Women of Mathematics:  a bibliographic sourcebook.  Greenwood Press.  Westport, CT.  1987

Women and Math:  Balancing the Equation.  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  London.  1985.