Laura Pisati

Laura Pisati (1869/1870[1] - 30 March 1908) was an Italian mathematician.[2][3] She was the first Italian to join the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV), in 1905, and in 1908 became the first woman invited to deliver a lecture at International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM).[4][5]

Pisati was born in Ancona, and worked as a teacher at a secondary school for girls in Rome beginning in 1897. She graduated from Sapienza University of Rome in 1905.[5] She died young a few days before the 1908 Congress in Rome,[6] and a few days before her intended wedding to Italian physicist and electrical engineer Giovanni Giorgi, who had mentored her as a master's student.[5] Her work for the Congress was titled "Saggio di una teoria sintetica delle funzioni di variabile complessa" ["An Essay on a Synthetic Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable"], and was presented by Roberto Marcolongo.[5][7][8]

Her geometry textbook Elementi di geometria ad uso delle scuole medie inferiori, published in 1907, was part of a movement in Italian teaching of the time reacting against a presentation of the material focusing on intuition and hands-on experimentation, as had become popular beginning in the 1880s, and returning to a style of teaching geometry that included more rigorous proofs. In her preface, Pisati wrote that it would be a mistake to omit formal proofs and that it is not any more difficult to include this material.[9]

Writings

Articles

  • Pisati, Laura (1905), "Sulla estensione del metodo di Laplace alle equazioni differenziali lineari di ordine qualunque con due variabili indipendenti", Rend. Circ. Matem. Palermo (in Italian), 20: 344–374, doi:10.1007/BF03014045, S2CID 124327707
  • Pisati, Laura (1908), "Sulle corrispondenze funzionali non analitiche originate da integrali definiti", Rend. Circ. Matem. Palermo (in Italian), 25: 272–282, doi:10.1007/BF03029130, S2CID 122781020

Books

  • L. Pisati (1907). Elementi di geometria ad uso delle scuole medie inferiori (in Italian). Paravia. ISBN 0-226-28863-3.

Notes

  1. ^ "La tragedia de Laura Pisati". Matemáticas y sus fronteras (in Spanish). Madri+d. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  2. ^ "Pisati Laura — Scienza a due voci". scienzaa2voci.unibo.it. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  3. ^ "Pisati Laura — Documents Indexed: 4 Publications since 1905, including 1 Book". zbmath.org/. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  4. ^ Moore, C. L. E. (1908). "The fourth International Congress of Mathematicians:sectional meetings". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 15 (1): 8–43. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1908-01685-9.
  5. ^ a b c d Mihaljević, Helena; Roy, Marie-Françoise (2019). "A Data Analysis of Women's Trails Among ICM Speakers". In Araujo, Carolina; Benkart, Georgia; Praeger, Cheryl E.; Tanbay, Betül (eds.). World Women in Mathematics 2018. Association for Women in Mathematics Series. Springer International Publishing. pp. 111–128. arXiv:1903.02543. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21170-7_5. S2CID 70349983.
  6. ^ Curbera, Guillermo P. (2009). "ROME 1908". Mathematicians of the World, Unite!: The International Congress of Mathematicians — A Human Endeavor. CRP Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-4398-6512-5.
  7. ^ Bryan, G. H. (April 1908). "The international Mathematical Congress at Rome". Nature. 77 (2008): 582–584. doi:10.1038/077582c0.
  8. ^ Furinghetti, Fulvia (October 2008). "The emergence of women on the international stage of mathematics education". ZDM. 40 (4): 529–543. doi:10.1007/s11858-008-0131-y. hdl:11567/235489. S2CID 145119304.
  9. ^ Menghini, Marta (2009). "The teaching of intuitive geometry in early 1900s Italian Middle School: Programs, mathematicians' views and praxis". In Bjarnadóttir, K.; Furinghetti, F.; Schubring, G. (eds.). Dig where you stand. Reykjavik: School of Education, University of Iceland. pp. 139–151.