Dr. Martha Teach Gnudi, known best in the history of technology for her collaborative work in the translation of 16th-century Italian classics, devoted a lifetime of scholarship to problems in the history of medicine. As an avocation, she also published two major works in the history of technology.
In collaboration with Cyril Stanley Smith, she translated the Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio (1540). This was published in 1942, reprinted in 1956, and issued in paperback in 1966. Her next major work was The Life and Times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545–99), in which she shared the title page with Jerome Pierce Webster, a noted plastic surgeon. Her study of Tagliacozzi, the pioneer in plastic surgery, was pursued in Bologna and continued in the United States. For this book she was awarded, in 1954, the Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine.
From 1967 almost until her death she was engaged in the translation into English of Agostino Ramelli’s Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), and in an extensive study of Ramelli’s life and times. Although the book was published in Paris by Ramelli, who was an engineer in the service of the King of France, its text was in Italian and French. Dr. Gnudi determined that the book was written first in Italian, so she translated directly from that language. She completed her work on this book before her death on April 30, but sadly she did not see a finished copy of it.
I collaborated with Dr. Gnudi on the technical aspects of her Ramelli work. It is well to emphasize that, while technical collaborators may supply specialized knowledge of devices and processes and of technical jargon, the chief contribution is that of the translator. Thus all of these books represent the meticulous scholarship and broad competence of Dr. Gnudi.
Born on October 26, 1908, in Sycamore, Illinois, Martha Teach graduated from the University of Southern California in 1929 and earned her doctorate in letters at the University of Bologna in 1931. She was married in 1933. From 1942 to 1963 she was librarian of the Webster Library of Plastic Surgery in the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York. Since 1964 she had been in charge of historical and special collections of the Biomedical Library, University of California in Los Angeles. In 1952, she was the recipient of an honorary award from the University of Bologna.
The world of learning can be grateful for her solid and lasting contributions to the history of technology and the history of medicine.
Eugene S. Ferguson
Originally published as Eugene S. Ferguson, “Martha Teach Gnudi (1908–76),” Technology and Culture 17, no. 3 (1976): 521–22. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.1976.a891762
Martha Teach Gnudi Research and Publication Papers 1540–1977, History and Special Collections Division, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA. Online Archives of California. Martha Teach Gnudi Research and Publication Papers, 1540-1977 – OAC.
Biringucci, Vannoccio, Cyril Stanley Smith, Martha Teach Gnudi. The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio: The Classic Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy. Mineola: Dover, 2005.
Ramelli, Agostino, Martha Teach Gnudi, and Eugene S. Ferguson. The Various and Ingenious Machines of Captain Agostino Ramelli: A Classic Sixteenth-Century Illustrated Treatise on Technology. New York: Dover, 1994.
Gnudi, Martha Teach. The Life and Times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Surgeon of Bologna, 1545–1599. Birmingham, AL: The Classics of Medicine Library, 1989.
Gnudi, Martha Teach, and Jerome Pierce Webster. The Life and Times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Surgeon of Bologna, 1545-1599 : With a Documented Study of the Scientific and Cultural Life of Bologna in the Sixteenth Century. Los Angeles: Zeitlin and Ver Brugge, 1976.
Biringucci, Vannoccio, Cyril Stanley Smith, Martha Teach Gnudi. The Pirotechnia of Biringuccio. Translated from the Italian with an introduction and notes by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi. New York: Basic Books, 1959.