Kudos to all the women who read when they didn’t have to.
One such woman was Lady Elena Lucretia Cornaro-Piscopia – born 375 years ago today on 5 June 1646. A true Renaissance woman, Elena Cornaro owns the distinction of being the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. (University of Padua, 1678). An expert musician, she mastered the harpsichord, the clavichord, the harp, and the violin. By age 11, she was proficient in Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish, adding Hebrew and Arabic in her teens. Before she was 20, she was studying physics, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and linguistics… then set her sights on a doctorate in theology.