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Maria Agnesi, the greatest female mathematician you’ve never heard of
The outmoded gender stereotype that women lack mathematical ability suffered a major blow in 2014, when Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, math’s most prestigious award.
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- The Conversation
An equally important blow was struck by an Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, born 300 years ago this month.
Agnesi was the first woman to write a mathematics textbook and to be appointed to a university chair in math, yet her life was marked by paradox.
Though brilliant, rich and famous, she eventually opted for a life of poverty and…