An Online Tour by
J.Y. 
Updated 3/18/01
An exceptional female
mathematician and a child prodigy, Maria Gaetana Agnesi still has no Italian postage
stamp to honor her. Here is an online
tour of some web pages I found informative, so that you won't have to trudge through
the heaps of futile pages and pages that can’t be displayed. I recommend that you go the pages in order,
but you can skip around if you’d like.
I saved my favorite site for last, so please don’t leave the tour until
you’ve seen it.
Looking for a short biography on Agnesi? This page has a biography of Maria Agnesi with plenty of information, and it’s not very time-consuming to read.
A
web page with biographical information on Maria Agnesi, as well as brief descriptions
of the books she wrote.
This
web page has a very long biography of Maria Agnesi, and excerpts from books and
letters. There are four pictures that
you can view by clicking on the portrait of Maria Agnesi.
This
page has a short but easy-to-understand graphical explanation of the Witch of
Agnesi, and a visual too. The text is
in a nice big font, so you won’t have bleeding eyeballs by the time you finish
reading the text.
This
page has a very detailed and elaborate explanation of why Maria Agnesi’s curve
is called the “Witch of Agnesi”.
Another
web page about the Witch of Agnesi, but you have to know trigonometry to
understand the proof.
Perhaps
the best Maria Agnesi site you’ll ever see in your life, this site is complete with
pictures, loads of information, and even a timeline! Some of the contents are still “under development”, but it’s almost
completely done.
of my online Maria Agnesi tour.