Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an 18th-century mathematician who became the first woman to write a major calculus textbook.
In 1739, she told her father she wanted to become a nun. He balked, but agreed to let her spend more time studying mathematics and theology.
Agnesi never entered a convent, but she also never married or had children, taking an alternate path as a lay Catholic who devoted her life to acts of charity. Read more