On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by
Peter the Lector brutally murdered Hypatia, one of the last great thinkers of
ancient Alexandria.
Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female
Scholar
An avowed paganist in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was
also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
•By Sarah
Zielinski
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.
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 [i]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, and she 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. 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 what is now known as 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.
“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.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Hypatia-Ancient-Alexandrias-Great-Female-Scholar.html#ixzz0j5lrI6FU
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