Throughout the history of science, mathematics, and philosophy, women have often been overlooked. But there is a woman who once lived who can never be overlooked, for her mental capabilities astounded all those around her. Her name was Hypatia. She lived in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, which at the time was a Greek settlement. She was a mathematician, philosopher, and teacher. Some of her inventions were the astrolabe and the hydrometer. She was the daughter of Theon, who was the last fellow
of the museum at Alexandria. While Hypatia did not teach at the Library, she received her pupils in the privacy of her home. Hypatia clearly lived during a power struggle between pagans and tolerant Christians on the one side, and dogmatic Christians who demanded the final destruction of paganism on the other. Hypatia herself was a pagan, but was respected by many Christians, and exalted by some (though by no means all) later Christian authors as a symbol of virtue, often portrayed as a life-long virgin. These later accounts should not be seen as strict historical records, though, as they often contradict each other.
Hypatia was gifted in every way. She was beautiful, and her intellect was astonishing. That intellect was nurtured by the best minds in the land. And she was steered toward independence. "Reserve your right to think," her father said, "for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all."
Hypatia's murder at the age of 45 was brutal. Alexandria had been locked in political division between Christians and Non Christians. To get reprisal on Hypatia's friend Orestes, who held political power, Bishop Cyril orchestrated a riot and during the chaos, captured Hypatia. She was then tortured, murdered, and her body torn apart and burned.
In mathematics, Hypatia is known for her work on the ideas of conic sections introduced by Appolonius, a famous geometer of the time. She edited the work on the Conics of Apollonius, which divided cones into different parts of a plane. This very concept developed the ideas of parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas found all throughout our solar system! With Hypatia's work on this important text, she simplified the concepts making them easier to understand, thus enabling the work to survive for many centuries. Hypatia also performed many lectures on the Arithmetica of Diophantus Algebra and included alternative solutions to many problems. Diophantus Algebra dealt with 1st degree and quadratic equations.
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