Hypatia

Hypatia, (born c. 355 ce—died March 415, Alexandria), Egyptian mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. Hypatia of Alexandria was the first female to contribute substantial developments in mathematics, hailing  from the times of the ancient and mighty Roman empire.

She was the daughter of the mathematician and philosopher Theon, who taught her mathematics, science, literature, philosophy, and the arts. Her father also desired for her to be the “perfect human being”, so they exercised daily to get her just a step closer to the title. This seemed to be a close father-daughter relationship, I mean she even did commentary in some of his books; Theon’s book three of his version of Ptolemy’s Almagest was actually the work of his amazing daughter. Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400 AD, which was quite astonishing and unheard of due to her being a woman. She lectured on mathematics and philosophy at the Platonist, teaching the philosophy of Neoplatonism. Hypatia based her teachings of  the founder of Neoplatonism and a developer of Neoplatonism around 300 AD. Hypatia symbolizes learning and science which the early Christians identified as paganism. The funny thing is that among the pupils who she taught in Alexandria there were many prominent Christians. Of her pupils one of the most famous is Synesius of Cyrene who would later to become the Bishop of Ptolemais.

In 415, Hypatia was condemned as a witch and was murdered by monks.Hypatia became the victim of a particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots. On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by Peter the Lector stripped Hypatia of her clothes, beat her to death with roofing tiles, tore her body into pieces and burned the pieces. Hypatia was living during a time of religious strife, her love of astronomy Hypatia-murdered-631.jpg__800x600_q85_cropwas her doom, making her a pagan in the eyes of the ruling officials.

Hypatia was not only a mathematician, she was an astronomer and philosopher as well.She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. Hypatia is considered an outstanding woman in my book because she was in a field that was foreign for women, but she didn’t let being a woman kept her from studying and teaching. We don’t hear about her often or really at, but we need to keep in mind that the ancient world was focused on the accomplishments of men. Women were seen as property and just baby makers. Hypatia never got married, she stepped out of the typical life of a women to make a difference and shape the minds of what appears to be some pretty prominent people. It was clear that she was in control of her own life. You don’t hear much about women that weren’t qHypatia_Humanity-Healing-204x300ueens, and she was clearly an amazing character. Someone saw her importance and actually made a movie called Agora starring Rachel Weisz, about Hypatia a couple years back which is pretty awesome. Hypatia is considered an outstanding woman to me because she stepped outside of the typical role of a woman. She wanted to play with the big boys and give them a run for their money. 

 

*Photos courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine

2 thoughts on “Hypatia

  1. Renee Marie Tillman

    I find this extremely interesting because you rarely even hear woman and math in the same sentence. I wonder why she was called a witch. Her death is a tragedy but this really opened my eyes. Wonderful, Awesome, blog post!

  2. Stephanie Reed Springer

    Hypatia seems to have been a pretty remarkable woman. Her accomplishments are impressive, especially given her time period. Her cruel and brutal death certainly speaks for the period in which she lived and the barbarism of the time. It is truly awful that such an important figure had to meet that demise.

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