Real Life Romance: Laura Bassi and Giuseppe Veratti

This month I’m indebted to Celeste Bradley’s book I Thee Wed ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) for bringing a Real Life Romance to my attention: Laura Bassi and Giuseppe Veratti. In a rather gratifying bit of role reversal, Giuseppe, who was a very active scientist, has fallen much more into obscurity than his scientist wife, Laura. Details about their marriage are lacking, but I was just too intrigued by the little I could discern to let this couple slip through my fingers.

Laura Bassi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1771 to a wealthy family. She was encouraged to pursue her interest in science and at the age of twenty-one she became a professor of anatomy. Then she was awarded the chair of philosophy at the University of Bologna. She had to earn her degree and give her first lecture in a public ceremony, which was attended by university faculty, students, and politicians and celebrities of the day. She was only the second woman in Europe to receive a university degree (the first was Elena Cornaro Piscopia, in 1678).

hommedia.ashxIn 1738, Laura married Giovanni Giuseppe Veratti. He was also a scientist, and the two conducted experiments together, mostly on electricity, throughout their marriage. They were a married science powerhouse 157 years before Marie and Pierre Curie tied the knot. They had twelve children (though some sources say they had eight), of whom five survived into adulthood (four entered the church and one became a scientist). Laura said of her decision to marry: “I have chosen a person who walks the same path of learning, and who from long experience, I was certain would not dissuade me from it.”

Laura was a work-from-home mom who lectured from her residence and used lab equipment largely provided by the university. She advocated for a higher salary and got it, earning the highest rate paid by the university at the time. She provided a dissertation yearly from 1746 – 1777.

At this point, allow me to present you with the most thrilling and happy single sentence I’ve ever read on Wikipedia:

In 1776, at the age of 65, she was appointed to the chair in experimental physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences, with her husband as a teaching assistant.

 

HER HUSBAND WAS HER TA. IN 1776. BE STILL MY HEART.

Laura lived to the age of 67, which is not bad for a woman in the 18th century who worked full-time and had twelve (or possibly eight) babies. She wrote and lectured about electricity as well as Newtonian physics, a relatively new field. In addition to performing experiments and writing together, she and Giuseppe ran a small school from their home.Laura_Bassi

It’s unfortunate that poor Giuseppe seems to have faded from view. I can’t tell you what Laura and Giuseppe felt about each other, but their marriage seems utterly remarkable to me. Clearly he was not threatened by her intelligence or by her career. Laura had sufficient public and familial support that she could have had a thriving career as a single woman, but working in tandem with a supportive husband opened up other possibilities for her (for instance, by lecturing at home, she was able to reach male and female students). A story about a woman whose husband was her TA would seem revolutionary today, let alone in the 1700s.

Someone write me a romance novel based on this couple! I’m begging!

 

Resources:

Epigenesys

Brittanica.com

School of Mathematics, St. Andrews, Scotland

Wikipedia

Sciencemuseum.org

I did find one book about Laura Bassi – Laura Bassi and Science in 18th Century Europe: The Extraordinary Life and Role of Italy’s Pioneering Female Professor, by Monique Frize. It’s available on Google Books.

Comments are Closed

  1. Lily says:

    I’m gonna be that person and point out: I think that there must be a typo and she couldn’t have been born in 1771?

  2. Karen says:

    Here is another RLR: Hester Bateman, first woman to register her mark in the silversmiths guild in London. As a widow of a smith, true, but the romance/biography points out she was an acknowledged part of their studio from the beginning. The Silver Touch, by Rosalind Laker

    Laker has quite a few other historic novels that may be based on real women, but I havent googled any of their names/read them yet.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silver-Touch-Rosalind-Laker-ebook/dp/B00O9VW8B0?ie=UTF8&keywords=The%20Silver%20Touch&qid=1462024596&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

  3. Karen says:

    Maybe real Life Romance should be a category for review?

  4. Kelly S says:

    @Lily I was thinking that too when I saw she married in 1738, 33 years before being born. The Wikipedia entry enabled me to discern that she was born in 1711.

  5. CarrieS says:

    Y’all are correct – she was born in 1711. Lord knows, it wouldn’t be a post form me if it didn’t have a typo (sigh)

  6. Jazzlet says:

    CarrieS I just love these posts, and it’s hard to edit your own writing so don’t fret about that!

  7. Danker says:

    Thanks CarrieS. I loved this. And I agree that the sentence which set your heart atremble is particularly fine.

  8. Becca says:

    Her papers have been digitized, and are available here for free here: http://bassiveratti.stanford.edu/

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