Cristina Roccati. La donna che osò studiare fisica

In Rovigo, an exhibition brings the story of Cristina Roccati back to life.

She was the third woman in the world to graduate and the first "non-resident" in history.

She taught Newtonian physics while writing poetry.

The ESA launches a space telescope named after her.

Rovigo remembers Cristina Roccati, the woman who "dared" to study physics.

At Palazzo Roncale, from December 6, 2024, to April 21, 2025, the story of this very young woman from Rovigo will be retold through an exhibition promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo in collaboration with the Accademia dei Concordi and the Municipality of Rovigo, with scientific curatorship by Elena Canadelli, from an idea by Sergio Campagnolo.

“She dared to study,” because at the time, for a girl of just 15 years old to leave a small town like Rovigo, which in the 1700s had a population of about 5,000 and an economy not among the most flourishing, to study at the University of Bologna was unheard of. Even more incomprehensible, and perhaps scandalous, seemed the subject of her studies: disciplines that went beyond the "women's" competencies, as the curator emphasizes.

Even though it was the Age of Enlightenment, universities continued to be an exclusive arena for affluent males. In the world at that time, only two women had graduated: Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684) and Laura Bassi (1711-1778), the first at the University of Padua, the second at the University of Bologna.

It was to the latter that, in 1747, at only 15 years old, Cristina turned. She arrived in Bologna escorted by an aunt and her house tutor, to study logic, philosophy, meteorology, geometry, and physics, becoming the first "non-resident" student in history. Her father, also making a countercurrent decision, had chosen to invest in her rather than in her brother.

“In a world without women like the science of that time–says the curator, professor Elena Canadelli–Roccati graduated in 1751, at just nineteen, and the following year moved to Padua to continue her education with the study of astronomy and Newtonian physics. Her career had actually started with erudite and occasional poetry, composed, for example, for the weddings of prominent figures, an activity that earned her appreciation not only in her hometown but also in Bologna and other Italian academies. A friend of the influential literary figure from Rovigo, Girolamo Silvestri, she was welcomed into the Accademia dei Concordi of Rovigo, an important cultural and scientific circle of the time. Forced to leave Padua already in 1752 due to the financial scandal involving her father, young Roccati devoted herself from then on to teaching physics in her hometown, primarily addressing the members of the Accademia dei Concordi, who in 1754 appointed her, not without protests and even polemical resignations, their "Prince."

“After the lively experiences in Bologna and Padua, Cristina Roccati's life was spent always in Rovigo, where she brought Galilean science and Newtonian physics, in lectures that have come down to us and give us a glimpse of the science and society of the time," the curator anticipates.

“Despite the difficulties, thanks to an undefined boundary between public and private, science and the marvelous, in the second half of the eighteenth century some women managed to carve out a role in science. Consider figures like the mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi in Milan and the physicist Laura Bassi in Bologna, or in France, the mathematician Émilie du Châtelet. Among them was also Roccati from Rovigo.”

“The exhibition gives voice back to one of the protagonists of this exciting period of science, through an exhibition path focused on the rediscovery of this forgotten figure. It will also recount some historical and scientific aspects of the eighteenth century, the century of reason and the Encyclopédie, of Voltaire and the French Revolution, but also of the dissemination of Newton's theories among the laymen and the wonder aroused by natural phenomena like electricity. In Roccati's time, the fashion for electricity shows and experimental demonstrations captivated nobles and academics in search of fame and notoriety, enlivening the soirées of courts and salons, while the first popular science books proliferated, such as Il Newtonianesimo per le dame (1737) by the Venetian-origin writer Francesco Algarotti or the Lezioni di fisica sperimentale (1743-48) by the Frenchman Jean Antoine Nollet.”

“As with many women of the era, a veil settled over her life and work after her death, a veil that the exhibition at Palazzo Roncale aims to lift to explore through her the relationships between science, society, and the role of women in the Enlightenment century. For a long time, women were excluded from institutional pathways in the scientific field, and even today, the topic of the presence/absence of women in science continues to provoke reflection and discussion, with the persistence of gender disparity in scientific subjects.”

Roccati's figure will allow for a historical exploration of these very current themes. A telescope named after her will be one of those launched into orbit as part of the PLATO project by the European Space Agency (ESA), whose mission is to identify Earth-like exoplanets: a new adventure for a woman who in the eighteenth century dedicated her life to science and the study of nature.

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