Pope Benedict XIV appointed Agnesi to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Bologna, making her among the first women in the world to hold such a position.
In 1750, following the acclaim generated by her Instituzioni analitiche, Pope Benedict XIV appointed Maria Gaetana Agnesi to an honorary chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Bologna. This made her one of the very first women in history to be offered a university professorship in mathematics, following in the footsteps of Laura Bassi, who had received a similar honor in physics at the same institution a few years earlier.
Historical accounts differ on whether Agnesi ever actually traveled to Bologna to lecture in person; many biographers believe the appointment was largely honorary, and that she continued to reside in Milan, where she was already turning her attention toward religious and charitable work following the death of her father in 1752. Nonetheless, the appointment itself was a landmark symbolic recognition of a woman's mathematical achievement by one of the most powerful religious authorities of the era.
This honor placed Agnesi within an extremely small group of women recognized by academic institutions in the eighteenth century, at a time when women were barred from formal university study across virtually all of Europe. It remains one of the most cited "firsts" in her biography and a touchstone in histories of women in science and mathematics.