Maria Agnesi was born to a wealthy family on May 16, 1718 in Milan, Italy (at the time, part of the Hapsburg empire). She received an excellent education through private tutors, showing great talent in languages and mathematics. Her early adulthood was spent taking care of her father and studying mathematics and religion. Agnesi wrote a book on differential calculus, which brought her considerable fame. The book was well written and synthesized a number of results in the calculus that had previously been scattered among disparate sources. She was offered a position at the University of Bolgna, but evidently never accepted the offer. After her father's death, Agnesi concentrated on charitable work. She died in poverty on January 9, 1799.
To students of calculus, Maria Agnesi is known for her study of the curve \[y = \frac{a^3}{x^2 + a^2}\] where \(a\) is a positive constant. The curve is now known as the witch of Agnesi in her honor. The term witch was evidently the result of a mistranslation of Agnesi's work. Sadly, the curve has no demonic or enchanted properties. When \(a = 1\) and the curve is normalized to produce a probability density function, the resulting distribution is the Cauchy distribution, named for Augustin Cauchy.