Anna Maria van Schurman

Anna Maria van Schurman (1607 to 1678) was a Dutch polymath, painter and philosopher, celebrated across seventeenth-century Europe as the most learned woman of her age. Her Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated, published in 1638, argued in scholastic Latin that women of leisure have both the right and the duty to receive a serious philosophical and theological education. Her correspondence with Descartes, Mersenne and the prince-bishop of Munster placed her at the centre of the Republic of Letters. Late in life she joined the radical pietist movement of Jean de Labadie, and her autobiographical Eukleria presented her early scholarly fame as a prelude to a more authentic life of devotion.