Laura Bassi, 1711-1778 Bassi was a true trailblazer both for natural philosophy and for women in academia as a whole. In 1732, when she was only 21, she received her doctorate from the University of Bologna — at the time the second woman ever to receive a doctorate from a European university. She became a professor of anatomy upon graduating, and then a year later received the chair of philosophy. She primarily occupied herself with physics, and she was on the cutting edge of science at the time, dealing with Newtonian physics and Franklinian electricity before the Italian universities even taught them. She wrote much more than she published, but in her teachings played a key role in importing Newton’s ideas about natural philosophy and expanding on them in her own ways.