Hypatia (c.370–415) was a Greek philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. The first prominent female astronomer and mathematician, she taught in Alexandria and became head of the Neo-Platonist school there.
Hypatia was the daughter of the mathematician and astronomer Theon of Alexandria, with whom she collaborated. Theon was the last head of the great Library of Alexandria, and so she had the best education from the start.
Hypatia is credited with inventing or helping invent mechanical devices such as the hydrometer and the plane astrolabe, an apparatus used by Greek astronomers to establish the position of the sun and stars.
Titles of three of Hypatia’s mathematical studies have been preserved, even though the works themselves have not survived—an arithmetical work, a commentary on Diophantus; a commentary on the astronomical Canon; and a geometrical work, an analysis on Apollonius of Perga’s Conics.
Hypatia was celebrated for her beauty, eloquence, and learning. While she is not recorded as holding an official teaching position, she taught both privately and publicly. She lectured on Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers, and attracted pupils from all parts of the Greek world—Christian and pagan.
The Archbishop (later Saint) Cyril of Alexandria begrudged her influence, and she was violently murdered by a Christian mob that he may have incited to riot in objection to her teaching Plato’s philosophy, which was seen as heretical. Her death, a result of political conflict between the authorities of church and state, was later sensationalized into a legend. It is often taken to mark the beginning of Alexandria’s decline as the outstanding center of Greek learning. Such figures as Voltaire and Bertrand Russell employed her legend for ideological purposes.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Hypatia of Alexandria
All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.
—Hypatia of Alexandria
To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world, is just as base as to use force… Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
—Hypatia of Alexandria
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth—often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
—Hypatia of Alexandria
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