When Laura Bassi entered the Bologna city hall in 1732 to defend her doctoral thesis, crowds of residents held their breath. The twenty-one-year-old woman was about to accomplish something no other European woman had achieved before her — to become a Doctor of Science and a university professor.
Secret Education
In eighteenth-century Europe, higher education was exclusively a male domain. Women, even from the wealthiest families, could expect at most to learn languages and the basics of running a household. Laura Bassi was born in 1711 in Bologna as the daughter of a prosperous lawyer, which gave her access to the city’s intellectual elite who gathered in their family home.
Her exceptional abilities were noticed by the family doctor Gaetano Tacconi, a professor of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna. He made a risky decision that could have ruined his reputation. For seven years, he secretly taught the young girl mathematics, physics, and medicine. Such education for a woman was not only unheard of but outright socially unacceptable at the time.
When Tacconi decided that his student was on par with her university peers, he began organizing philosophical debates at her home. Invited scholars left amazed at the teenagers intellectual level, and word of the child prodigy quickly spread throughout the city.
Public Triumph and Papal Support
The year 1732 brought a series of events that shook the academic world across Europe. In March, the Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, organized a public examination for Laura before a panel of the university’s most distinguished philosophers. For two and a half hours, the twenty-one-year-old woman answered questions on 49 theses in physics, logic, and metaphysics.
Her doctoral defense took place in April, not in the traditional church settings but moved to the city hall due to overwhelming interest. Bassi presented theses clearly inspired by Isaac Newton’s work on optics and the nature of light, demonstrating her knowledge of the latest achievements in physics.
When she officially received her doctorate in May, Bologna celebrated as if for the grandest events. A commemorative medal was struck with her likeness, and poets published poems in her honor. A month later, after defending another dissertation on the properties of water, she was appointed Professor of Physics with an annual salary of one hundred scudi.
The Academic Glass Ceiling
The joy of triumph soon collided with the harsh realities of academia. Most professors at the University of Bologna categorically refused to allow a woman to deliver regular lectures. The title of professor turned out to be largely honorary, and Bassi was permitted to appear at the university only on rare occasions.
The scholar, however, had no intention of giving up teaching. She established a laboratory in her home, where she held lectures and experimental demonstrations for students. She was one of the first in Italy to promote Newtonian physics, basing her classes on the famous Principia. In the 1760s, she began pioneering research into the medical uses of electricity.
In 1738, she married a young physician, Giuseppe Verati, who became her closest scientific collaborator. The couple had eight children, and one son, Paolo, continued the family tradition as a professor of physics. Motherhood did not prevent Laura from publishing 28 scientific papers in mechanics and hydrodynamics.
The Only Woman Among the Scientific Elite
When Cardinal Lambertini became Pope Benedict XIV in 1740, he did not forget his protégé. Five years later, he reformed the Bologna Academy of Sciences, creating an elite group of 25 of the most outstanding scholars known as the Benedettini. Members of this group were required to regularly present the results of their research.
Bassi lobbied intensely for a place in this exclusive company. Her candidacy sparked heated disputes, as admitting a woman to the circle of top scholars seemed unacceptable to many professors. The Pope found a Solomonic solution and appointed her the twenty-fifth member of the Benedettini, but without the full voting rights enjoyed by the other members.
Despite these limitations, Laura Bassi remained the only woman in history to join this prestigious group. Her achievements were appreciated by the greatest scientists of the era, including the famous French mathematician and astronomer Jérôme Joseph de Lalande among her admirers.
It was only at the end of her life, in 1776, that Bassi received full recognition as head of the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Bologna. She died two years later, leaving a legacy that paved the way for future generations of women in science.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.