Laura Pisati

{{short description|Italian mathematician}}

Laura Pisati (1869/1870{{cite web |title=La tragedia de Laura Pisati |url=https://www.madrimasd.org/blogs/matematicas/2020/08/06/148254 |website=Matemáticas y sus fronteras |publisher=Madri+d |access-date=31 January 2023 |language=Spanish}} - 30 March 1908) was an Italian mathematician.{{Cite web|title=Pisati Laura {{em-dash}} Scienza a due voci|url=http://scienzaa2voci.unibo.it/biografie/1166-pisati-laura|access-date=2020-08-16|website=scienzaa2voci.unibo.it}}{{Cite web

|title=Pisati Laura {{em-dash}} Documents Indexed: 4 Publications since 1905, including 1 Book

|url=https://zbmath.org/authors/?q=laura+pisati

|access-date=2020-08-16

|website=zbmath.org/}} 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).{{cite journal |last1=Moore |first1=C. L. E.|author-link= Clarence Lemuel Elisha Moore |title=The fourth International Congress of Mathematicians:sectional meetings|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.|date=1908 |volume=15 |pages=8–43| issue=1| doi=10.1090/S0002-9904-1908-01685-9|doi-access=free}}{{cite book|last1=Mihaljević|first1=Helena|last2=Roy|first2=Marie-Françoise|author2-link= Marie-Françoise Roy |editor1-last=Araujo|editor1-first=Carolina|editor1-link=Carolina Araujo (mathematician)|editor2-last=Benkart|editor2-first=Georgia|editor2-link= Georgia Benkart |editor3-last=Praeger|editor3-first=Cheryl E.|editor3-link= Cheryl Praeger |editor4-last=Tanbay|editor4-first=Betül|editor4-link= Betül Tanbay |contribution=A Data Analysis of Women's Trails Among ICM Speakers|doi=10.1007/978-3-030-21170-7_5|pages=111–128|publisher=Springer International Publishing|series=Association for Women in Mathematics Series|title=World Women in Mathematics 2018|year=2019|arxiv=1903.02543|s2cid=70349983}}

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. She died young a few days before the 1908 Congress in Rome,{{Cite book

|last1=Curbera

|first1=Guillermo P.

|title=Mathematicians of the World, Unite!: The International Congress of Mathematicians — A Human Endeavor

|publisher= CRP Press

|year=2009

|page=44

|chapter= ROME 1908

|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9uDqBgAAQBAJ&q=laura+pisati&pg=PA44

|isbn= 978-1-4398-6512-5

}} 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. 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.{{cite journal|last=Bryan|first=G. H.|author-link=George H. Bryan|date=April 1908|doi=10.1038/077582c0|issue=2008|journal=Nature|pages=582–584|title=The international Mathematical Congress at Rome|volume=77|doi-access=free}}{{cite journal|last=Furinghetti|first=Fulvia|date=October 2008|doi=10.1007/s11858-008-0131-y|issue=4|journal=ZDM|pages=529–543|title=The emergence of women on the international stage of mathematics education|volume=40|s2cid=145119304|hdl=11567/235489|hdl-access=free}}

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.{{cite book|last=Menghini|first=Marta|year=2009|contribution=The teaching of intuitive geometry in early 1900s Italian Middle School: Programs, mathematicians’ views and praxis|editor1-first=K.|editor1-last=Bjarnadóttir|editor2-first=F.|editor2-last=Furinghetti|editor3-first=G.|editor3-last=Schubring|title=Dig where you stand|pages=139–151|location=Reykjavik|publisher=School of Education, University of Iceland}}