Hypatia - Centre For Urban Schooling, OISE



Hypatia of Egypt

Time-line card:

Full name: Hypatia

Date of birth and death: c. 370 - 415

Place of Birth: Alexandria, Egypt

Math concept: inventor of astrolabe and worked on Apollonius’ concepts on conics

Background Information:

Description of Hypatia’s life

-spent entire life in Alexandria, Egypt

-no evidence she left the city

-lived with father Theon who was a mathematician and astronomer. He was known to have been associated with the Alexandrian Museum (an institution of higher learning)

-she was born around c.370 (uncertain)

-she surpassed her father’s talents in mathematics and especially in astronomy

-she learned how to track the movements of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn

-Her philosophical inclinations tended toward ethics and morals, science and reasoning

-she was involved in politics, a political figure that pushed for scientific rationalism

-well respected teacher and loved by her students

-she taught mathematics and philosophy, gave public lectures, and possibly held some kind of public office

-she wrote books with her father

-best recorded event of her life is her death

-brutally murdered---a crowd of Christian mob seized her, stripped her and dismembered her and burned the pieces of her corpse

-however another account tells that she was burned alive, but this is the less accurate version

-actual causes not fully known…speculations that she was murdered because she was a well-known public figure and/or as a result of her mathematical activities and possibly because of religious differences

-generally accepted date of her death 415

Major events in that time period

-Alexandria around 400 was a mix of cultures

-Majority were Christians, there were also Jews and Gnostics

-Alexandria part of Roman Empire

-Roman Empire split in 395 into Western Empire (ruled from Rome) and the Eastern Empire (ruled from Constantinople)

-Julian the Apostate reigned over both Empire from 361 to 363

-Orestes a local governor(Christian) at the time of Hypatia’s death sympathetic to other views, but his authority was challenged by Cyril (St. Cyril of Alexandria) who was not very accepting

-Cyril acceded to bishopric in 412

-differences in the city led to violence—libraries associated with the Museum were destroyed

Math Concept/Contributions

-Synesius’s (one of Hypatia’s students) references in letters mention Hypatia as the inventor of astrolabe which is an instrument used to study astronomy

-Hypatia taught about astrolabes

-Hypatia worked on Apollonius’(lived in 200 B.C.) concepts on conics and she is well known for that

-she edited works such as “On the Conics of Apollonius”, and this particular work divided cones into different parts by a plane. Furthermore, this concept led to the development of ideas about parabolas, hyperbolas, and ellipses.

-she developed a water distilling instrument, another for measuring water and a graduated brass hydrometer that determines the gravity of liquid

-edited works of geometry, algebra, and astronomy

-Hypatia’s work later expanded by Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz

Where her interests came from

-learned Math from father

-Theon taught her religion

-she was associated with a different school which is the Neo-platonic school

Is she famous?

-first woman mathematician of whom detailed knowledge is known of

-a lot of info on her but not very accurate and very little known about her Mathematics

-evidence demonstrates she was regarded as a teacher and a scholar

-at the time of her death was the greatest mathematician living in Greco-Roman world, possibly the whole world

Sources:

1. "Of Stars and Numbers: The Story of Hypatia"  (kids book) by

D. Anne Love

2. Hypatia of Alexandria (from physics.ucsc.edu/~drip/7B/hypatia.pdf)

3. A Christian Martyr in Reverse Hypatia: 370-415 AD A vivid portrait of

the life and death of Hypatia as seen through the eyes of a feminist poet

and novelist by Ursule Molinaro. (Hypatia vil 4, no.1 Spring 1989)

4. Hypatia and her Mathematics in The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 101 (3), 1994, p. 234-243 by Michael A. B. Deakin.

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