Maria Piazza

[2][3] She attended the University of Naples and graduated in 1916 with an undergraduate degree in chemistry, which allowed her to begin teaching in middle school.

[3] In 1938, new racial laws were introduced in Italy by its fascist regime, which took away the civil rights of the country's citizens of Jewish origin.

These institutes were allowed by officials but controlled "through an 'Aryan' Commissioner, appointed directly by the Italian Ministry of National Education.

Two of the professors had already lost their university chairs, Emma Castelnuovo and Maria Piazza as well as courageous Aryan teachers who joined the faculty of the new school, which opened in December 1938, near the Colosseum.

Still, in December 1941, using a fictitious name: “Integrative courses in mathematical culture,” Piazza taught at an outlaw university called L'Universita Clandestina A Roma.