Bassi was granted an honorary post in natural philosophy at the University of Bologna, becoming the first female university physics professor in Europe.
In October 1732, following her doctoral degree and admission to the Academy of Sciences, Laura Bassi was granted an honorary professorship in natural philosophy at the University of Bologna. This appointment made her the first woman in Europe to hold a university professorship, and specifically the first woman to be recognized as a professor of physics.
The appointment, backed strongly by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini and the Bologna Senate, was groundbreaking because universities across Europe were entirely closed to women as faculty members, and indeed as students in almost every case. Bologna's relatively unique intellectual culture, along with Bassi's demonstrated brilliance, allowed this exception to be made — though even in Bologna, her position came with significant restrictions on her ability to lecture freely to mixed audiences of male students without special permission.
Bassi's professorship was initially largely honorary and came with a modest stipend, but it established a crucial precedent: a woman could formally hold academic rank and be addressed as a professor of natural philosophy. Over the following decades she would push against restrictions on her teaching, eventually lecturing from her own home and, later in life, being granted a full chair of experimental physics.
This 1732 appointment is widely cited by historians of science as the moment a woman first broke into the ranks of university faculty in the physical sciences anywhere in Europe, a milestone that would not be widely repeated for well over a century.