Medea Norsa

[4] In 1906, she earned a degree in literature with full marks from the University of Florence, with a dissertation on Sophocles' Ajax and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes.

[3] In December 1906, she began to collaborate with her mentor Girolamo Vitelli and obtained a diploma from the school of palaeography, still at the Istituto di Studi Superiori.

[4][7] In 1911, Norsa returned to Florence to work with Vitelli on the first volume of Papiri Greci e Latini della Società Italiana (PSI), which was published in 1912.

[5] Norsa's application to visit Egypt for the second season of the Antinoopolis excavation in 1939 prompted an enquiry by the government into her racial status, meaning she was not able to go.

[3] During her time at the Institute, Norsa played a key role in the acquisition of further papyri and ostraka, using funds offered by Enrico Rostagno,[3] and maintained a network of other papyrologists and antiquities dealers.

[13] She retired from the position of head of the Istituto Papirologico in 1949,[3] and was made the honorary president of the Association Internationale de Papyrologie in the same year.

[11] Norsa's house had been bombed in March 1944 during the Second World War, destroying all of her books and papers and killing her sister-in-law, Eugenia.

[3][11][8] Unable to afford any rebuilding work, she spent the rest of her life as a temporary guest first at the Laurentian Library, then at various religious institutions.