today’s scientist, hypatia, is a blast from the past (the 4th century, to be exact). hypatia is one of the first female mathematicians that we have any record of. as it turns out, that record isn’t very good—we hardly know anything about her early life, and her scientific achievements aren’t well documented at all. most of what we know about her is actually about her death. more on that in a moment. before we get to hypatia’s death and why it mattered, let’s talk about who hypatia was. hypatia was from the city of alexandria. her father, theon tutored her in mathematics and science. she became a respected academic in alexandria’s university, rare for a woman, and was renowned for her intellect. she wrote and lectured on astronomy, algebra, geometry, and philosophy, and was a popular public speaker. hypatia’s surviving work is mostly commentary on earlier works. she collaborate with her father on an eleven part commentary of ptolemy’s almagest, and helped produce a new edition of euclid’s elements. she also wrote her own commentaries on diophantus’ arithmetica and apollonius’ conics, though those have since been lost to time.
 
hypatia was also famous for being a neoplatonist philosopher, a fact that would eventually lead to her death. one of her many admirers was a roman state official named orestes. when cyril, the archbishop at the time, and orestes became at odds over control of alexandria, rumors were spread that hypatia was preventing them from reconciling. an angry mob of christian zealots turned their anger at orestes onto hypatia, and beat her to death. after her death, hypatia became known as a pagan martyr of sorts, and her murder was often used as proof that christians were fanatical enemies of scholarly learning. later, hypatia was also co-opted as a precursor to feminism. though her death marked an important shift between paganism and christianity in alexandria, hypatia’s life was significant for many reasons other than its end, and we owe many of our preservations of hellenistic scientific and philosophical thought to her.




(written 3/10/21)