Hypatia of Alexandria

#42/100 of #100extraordinarywomen

Hypatia of Alexandria is not like my usual entry to this blog. But I must confess that Hypatia intrigued me much more than any woman I have already shared about. For one, we are not talking about the 19th or the 20th century here; we are talking about the 4th century. It is amazing that while we women are struggling to make a mark for ourselves in the 20th century, Hypatia stood out among the men and was well respected and acknowledged in 4th century. What is sad though is that, not many could digest that and she suffered for no fault of hers. Still, even to this day, she is revered as "symbol of virtue" even by the Christians who in a way were responsible for her Death. The contemporary Christian historian Socrates of Constantinople described her in his Ecclesiastical History: "There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."

Hypatia of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. This is her story.

One day on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 415 or 416, a mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector accosted a woman’s carriage and dragged her from it and into a church, where they stripped her and beat her to death with roofing tiles. They then tore her body apart and burned it. Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Though she is remembered more for her violent death, her dramatic life is a fascinating lens through which we may view the plight of science in an era of religious and sectarian conflict.

To understand Hypatia, one must first understand Alexandria, the setting, the city, which first bolstered her talent and then destroyed it. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., the city of Alexandria quickly grew into a center of culture and learning for the ancient world. At its heart was the museum, a type of university, whose collection of more than a half-million scrolls was housed in the library of Alexandria. Alexandria underwent a slow decline beginning in 48 B.C., when Julius Caesar conquered the city for Rome and accidentally burned down the library. (It was then rebuilt.) By 364, when the Roman Empire split and Alexandria became part of the eastern half, the city was beset by fighting among Christians, Jews and pagans. Further civil wars destroyed much of the library's contents. The last remnants likely disappeared, along with the museum, in 391, when the archbishop Theophilus acted on orders from the Roman emperor to destroy all pagan temples. Theophilus tore down the temple of Serapis, which may have housed the last scrolls, and built a church on the site.

The last known member of the museum was the mathematician and astronomer Theon — Hypatia's father. Some of Theon's writing has survived. His commentary (a copy of a classical work that incorporates explanatory notes) on Euclid's Elements was the only known version of that cardinal work on geometry until the 19th century. But little is known about his and Hypatia's family life. Even Hypatia's date of birth is contested — scholars long held that she was born in 370 but modern historians believe 350 to be more likely. The identity of her mother is a complete mystery, and Hypatia may have had a brother, Epiphanius, though he may have been only Theon's favorite pupil. Theon taught mathematics and astronomy to his daughter, who studied in Athens and who later collaborated on some of his commentaries. It is thought that Book III of Theon's version of Ptolemy's Almagest — the treatise that established the Earth-centric model for the universe that wouldn't be overturned until the time of Copernicus and Galileo — was actually the work of Hypatia.

She was a mathematician and astronomer in her own right, writing commentaries of her own and teaching a succession of students from her home. Around 400, she became head of what is now known as the Neoplatonist School in Alexandria, where she imparted the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to students, including pagans, Christians, and foreigners. Letters from one of these students, Synesius, indicate that these lessons included how to design an astrolabe, a kind of portable astronomical calculator that would be used until the 19th century. Beyond her father's areas of expertise, Hypatia established herself as a philosopher in the Neoplatonic school, a belief system in which everything emanates from the One. (Her student Synesius would become a bishop in the Christian church and incorporate Neoplatonic principles into the doctrine of the Trinity.) Her public lectures were popular and drew crowds. 

No written work widely recognized by scholars as Hypatia's own has survived to the present time. Many of the works commonly attributed to her are believed to have been collaborative works with her father, Theon Alexandricus. This kind of authorial uncertainty is typical for female philosophers in antiquity. A partial list of Hypatia's works as mentioned by other antique and medieval authors or as posited by modern authors:

• A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.
• A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius of Perga.
• Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest. "Until recently scholars thought that Hypatia revised Theon's commentary on Almagest. The view was based on the title of the commentary on the third book of Almagest, which read: "Commentary by Theon of Alexandria on Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest, edition revised by my daughter Hypatia, the philosopher." Cameron, who analyzed Theon's titles for other books of Almagest and for other scholarly texts of late antiquity, concludes that Hypatia corrected not her father's commentary but the text of Almagest itself. Thus, the extant text of Almagest could have been prepared, at least partly, by Hypatia".
• Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements.
• She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon". (Either a new edition of Ptolemy's Handy Tables or commentary on the aforementioned Almagest.)

Her contributions to technology are reputed to include the invention of the hydrometer, used to determine the relative density (or specific gravity) of liquids. However, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time. Some say that this is a textual misinterpretation of the original Greek, which mentions a hydroscopium - a clock that works with water and gears, similar to the Antikythera mechanism.

Her student Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, wrote a letter describing his construction of an astrolabe. Earlier astrolabes predate that of Synesius by at least a century, and Hypatia's father had gained fame for his treatise on the subject. However, Synesius claimed that his was an improved model. Synesius also sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him.

"Donning [the robe of a scholar], the lady made appearances around the center of the city, expounding in public to those willing to listen on Plato or Aristotle," the philosopher Damascius wrote after her death. Although contemporary fifth-century sources identify Hypatia of Alexandria as a practitioner and teacher of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, two hundred years later, the seventh-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû identified her as a Hellenistic pagan and that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles". However, not all Christians were as hostile towards her and some Christians even used Hypatia as symbolic of Virtue.

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.