I had the pleasure to oversee my daughter's
homework this week end as I discovered with her this inspiring woman from the
Antiquity.
Her story is especially relevant to current affairs: extremists manipulated in power factions' games. Mostly, she is one of the first woman in Science, and her death put on hold mathematics for one thousand years!
I put this homework as a memorabilia of this special moment for me and
my daughter, and also to share.
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| Hypatia (370 - 412 AD) represented here in the movie 'Agora', from A. Amenabar |
Hypatia was born in Alexandria, Egypt.
The story goes that Hypatia’s father strived to create the perfect human in the Greek education tradition, including Science, Philosophy, Rhetoric (speech) and various Sports. He taught Hypatia until he realized that she had surpassed his knowledge. He then sent her to study in Athens for a number of years. After studying in Athens, Hypatia travelled around Europe for ten years before returning to Alexandria, where she met a tragic fate.
Hypatia wrote a treatise on
Mathematics titled ‘Astronomic canon of
Diaphanous’ and ‘Conics of Apollonius’.
Conic sections are the figures formed by the intersection of a plane and a
cone. Neglected for many centuries after Hypatia’s death, the importance of the
conic sections was finally recognized in the seventeenth century. Today, the
conic sections are used to describe the orbits of planets, the paths of comets,
and the motion of rockets. She also wrote instructions to create an astrolabe
to help sailors navigate and developed a way to distil sea water so that
sailors wouldn’t die of thirst. Another invention was her planisphere, a chart
of the stars and their movements across the sky. Lastly, she created a brass
hydrometer: a sealed tube with a weight at one end for measuring the density of
a liquid.
Unfortunately most of Hypatia’s books were destroyed in the great fire at the library of Alexandria, although, much later, in the 18thcentury, a few of her books were found in the Vatican City. Despite the fact that Hypatia was a brilliant academic, much of her work is known today thanks to her pupils, Synesius, who was able to carry her work and promote it. As a man, it would have been easier for him to advertise his findings and be recognised for them. This is not to say that Hypatia was not a prominent woman of her time. The city magistrate, Orestes, one of Hypatia’s former pupils, consulted her on important cases regarding the city policies.
Hypatia is well known by feminists. She chose not
to be married; because she did not want to enter the role of a submissive wife.
She wouldn’t have been able to enter in conversation with her husband’s guests
for example, which would not have suited her enquiring mind. We have to
remember that at the time, in Alexandria, women were the property of their
fathers until they married; they then became the property of their husbands.
Although she was born into a Greek progressive, intellectual family, we should
remember that Alexandria was under the rule of the Roman Empire, a highly
patriarchal society.
Her strength of character was further tested when
Orestes, a friend and moderate Christian ruler, begged her to convert to
Christianity to save her life, when a more radical Christian ruler, Cyril, rose
into power, threatened her to death for her pagan believes as a scientist,
using her as a pawn in the power game between the two men. In the Great Greek
Tradition of Socrates, she stood by her beliefs in the power of reason and
philosophy. She refused to convert and stoically walked to her brutal death at
the hands of a fanatical Christian mob.
Today Hypatia’s courage is recognised. The leading
journal in feminist philosophy is titled ‘Hypatia’
in her honour as the first famous woman mathematician. Hypatia was taught in
the Greek tradition to analyse and question everything, so she couldn’t accept
dogmatic beliefs including religion the way it was taught at the time. Despite
her great academic achievements, she is mostly remembered as a symbol of her
age, as a marker of changing times between Greek philosophical enquiry and
Dogmatic Christian cults. She marks the end of neo-platonism and
the end of scientific enquiry. It was only a matter of time before her
work could be used again for the advancement of science (17thcentury).
I also recommend the movie, Agora, by A. Amenabar
which depicts her life, although, it is a bit too graphical for my liking at
the end, so you can skip the last five minutes – I normally ‘never do that’.
