Google Doodle celebrates Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 296th birthday 

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Google Doodle celebrates Maria Gaetana Agnesi\'s 296th birthday

Italian mathematician who lends her name to a curve, was only the second woman ever granted a professorship and went on to devote her life to philanthropic efforts and the study of theology

Maria Gaetana Agnesi would have been 296 today Photo: Google

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan in 1718 and was said to have been fluent in Italian and French at the age of five. By eleven she had learned Greek, Hebrew, Spanich, German and Latin.

She has a mathematical curve named after her: the Witch of Agnesis, which is a line described by lines passing through and beyond a circle. Google\'s doodle shows such a curve being constructed around the second \'o\' in the company\'s logo.

Mathematician Guido Grandi suggested the name "versoria" for the curve before Agnesi\'s birth in 1703, the Latin word for sheet. Subsequent mistranslations, and Agnesi\'s work on the curve in her Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana, led to the creation of the later name.

The curve has some real-world applications, although they were only found long after Agnesi died. In the late 1900s it was discovered to apply to the spectral line distribution of optical lines and x-rays. It also describes the amount of power dissipated in resonant electrical circuits.

In later life she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV to be chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at Bologna, although she never served, only the second professorship ever granted to a woman.

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