Mathematician:Hypatia of Alexandria
Mathematician
Greek: Ὑπατία.
Egyptian mathematician, astronomer, scientist and philosopher. Daughter of Theon of Alexandria.
Head of Platonist school in Alexandria in c. $400$ CE.
Notable for:
- Being the first woman in mathematics notable enough to have been remembered by history
- Being murdered by a mob of Christians for holding pagan beliefs.
Her death has been argued as signalling the decline of learning in the Western world, and the start of the "dark ages", from which recovery would not happen for another thousand years.
Despite the accolades, and the focus on her importance as a historical figure for the reasons above, it is not certain what (if anything) she contributed to mathematics that was original.
The problem is that because of the vilification of her that preceded her murder, all her works were destroyed, and so nobody will ever know.
Nationality
Alexandrian (a city in what is now Egypt).
History
- Born: between 350 and 370 CE
- Died: March 415
Publications
- A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.
- A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius.
- Edited the existing version of Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest.
- Edited Theon's commentary on Euclid's The Elements.
- The Astronomical Canon (possibly a new edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Handy Tables).
Critical View
- In an era in which the domains of intellect and politics were almost exclusively male, Theon was an unusually liberated person who taught an unusually gifted daughter and encouraged her to achieve things that, as far as we know, no woman before her did or perhaps even dreamed of doing.
- -- Ian Mueller
Linguistic Note
While it is common to anglicise the pronunciation of her name as Hip-ay-sha, it may be more correct from examination of its Greek lettering to voice her name as Hip-a-tee-a.
Sources
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Hypatia of Alexandria": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {A}.9$: Hypatia (A.D. $\text {370?}$ – $\text {415}$)
- 1992: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Puzzles ... (previous) ... (next): The First Pure Number Puzzles
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hypatia (c. 370-415)
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hypatia (c.370-415)
- 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $2$: The Logic of Shape: Problems for the Greeks
- 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hypatia (370-415)