Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 linguist, mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, and philosopher. Agnesi ((a.ˈɲe.zi; the "gn" digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

 is pronounced with the palatal nasal

Palatal nasal

The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...

 /ɲ/) is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus

Calculus

Calculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...

. She was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

. According to Dirk Jan Struik

Dirk Jan Struik

Dirk Jan Struik was a Dutch mathematician and Marxian theoretician who spent most of his life in the United States.- Life :...

, Agnesi is "the first important woman mathematician since Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia was an Egyptian Neoplatonist philosopher who was the first notable woman in mathematics. As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she also taught philosophy and astronomy...

 (fifth century A.D.)".

Her sister was Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, a pianist and composer.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan on May 16, 1718, to a wealthy and literate family.