Hypatia

Egyptian scientist

• Born: c. 370
• Birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt
• Died: March 1, 0415
• Place of death: Alexandria, Egypt

A mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and teacher, Hypatia is best known for the manner of her death, which made her a symbol of courage in the face of an oppressive Christian Church.

Early Life

Almost nothing is known about the early life of Hypatia (hi-PAY-shyuh). Ancient Rome did not have the elaborate systems of record keeping found in the modern world, and no one in Hypatia’s own time considered her worthy of biographical attention. Although she made significant contributions to at least three fields of study, Hypatia is more famous for the way she died than for what she accomplished in life. While many legends about her early life have sprung up over the centuries, none are considered reliable sources of information about Hypatia’s youth.

What is known is that she was the daughter of the pagan Theon, an important astronomer and mathematician in Alexandria. Alexandria, the third largest city in the Holy Roman Empire, had once been the intellectual center of Greece and was the home of the first university three hundred years before the time of Christ. Mathematics was taught then by Euclid, whose ideas about plane geometry are still at the foundation of basic geometry courses more than two thousand years later.

Seven hundred years after Euclid, Theon was teaching mathematics in Alexandria and writing books of commentary on ancient mathematics. He may also have written several books on the occult. At the time of Hypatia’s birth, the Roman Empire was suspicious of Greek mathematics and attempted to suppress it. The life of a pagan scholar was intellectually exciting but politically dangerous.

The traditional date for Hypatia’s birth is 370, although most scholars now believe that she must have been born earlier. Nothing is known of her mother. Some stories tell that Theon supervised her complete education, demanding that she discipline her mind and body. According to this version of her life, Theon developed a rigorous system of exercises Hypatia performed every day and oversaw her training in public speaking and rhetoric. Probably he taught her mathematics himself. According to legend, Hypatia was Theon’s most talented student, surpassing her teacher and eventually becoming his collaborator. She apparently never married but devoted herself to her studies.

Life’s Work

Eventually Hypatia became a university lecturer herself, teaching mathematics and astronomy. According to historical accounts left by Socrates Scholasticus (c. 379-450), a contemporary of Hypatia, she was a charismatic teacher who attracted the best students from Asia, Africa, and Europe. They were drawn to her intelligence, her legendary beauty, and her reputation as an oracle.

In Hypatia’s time, mathematics was a different type of inquiry than it is today. Although it dealt with the relationships between geometric shapes, such as spheres, ellipses, and cones, mathematics was used to discover the composition of the universe. A series of mathematical problems might seek to reveal such things as the locations of the planets or the location of the soul. The discipline was not far removed from astronomy, which was similar to what the modern world would consider to be astrology.

Although few of Hypatia’s writings survive, much is known about her research, because descriptions of her work do survive in the form of letters and histories written by her students and followers. Her most important work was a thirteen-volume commentary on the Arithmētika (c. 250 c.e.; “Arithmetica” in Diophantus of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra, 1885) by Diophantus, who is sometimes called the “father of algebra.” Diophantus, who lived in Alexandria in the second century c.e., was interested in equations that can be solved in more than one way, which are now known as “indeterminate” or “Diophantine” equations. He also studied quadratic equations. Hypatia proposed some new problems and new solutions to complement Diophantine’s work. A fragment of her Commentary on the Arithmetic of Diophantus was found in the Vatican in the fifteenth century.

Her second major work was the eight-volume Treatise on the Conics of Apollonius. Apollonius, who lived in Alexandria in the third century b.c.e., was most interested in the geometry of cones, especially because conic sections such as the ellipse and the parabola could explain planetary orbits. Hypatia’s commentary presents Apollonius’s difficult concepts in a more accessible form, suitable for her students, and supplements the earlier work. Hypatia’s text was the last important consideration of conic sections until the seventeenth century. Other writings thought to be Hypatia’s include a commentary on Ptolemy’s great second century compilation of all that was then known about the stars, the Mathēmatikē syntaxis (c. 150 c.e.; Almagest, 1948). She is also believed to have written, in collaboration with Theon, a discussion of the work of Euclid—the last important contribution to Euclidean geometry until the end of the sixteenth century.

In the late tenth century, a researcher named Suidas identified several more writings that he attributed to Hypatia, but no copies are known to exist today. According to letters written by one of her students, the philosopher Synesius, Hypatia was also skilled as an inventor. She is said to have developed a form of the astrolabe, used to measure the positions of planets and stars, and other instruments for the study of astronomy.

As a philosopher, Hypatia is identified as a member of the Neoplatonic school, a group based on the later teachings of Plato. Neoplatonism, the last major pagan philosophy, was founded by Plotinus a hundred years before Hypatia’s birth; Neoplatonists saw reality as a hierarchical order with “the One” at the center, linked together by the “World Soul.” During Hypatia’s lifetime, Neoplatonism was, according to Greek thought, scientific and rational. Hypatia was as well-known as a philosopher as she was as a mathematician, and she was frequently consulted on matters philosophical and political. She was a celebrated figure, sweeping through the city on her chariot on her way to the university or to the homes of important people. It was this fame that ultimately led to her death.

Western mathematics had long been dominated by the Greeks and held little interest for the Romans (imagine trying to do even simple algebra using Roman numerals). The increasingly Christianized Roman Empire believed that science and mathematics were heretical and evil. The Church leaders also felt threatened by Neoplatonism, which involved a focus on rationalism that contradicted the notion of faith. During Hypatia’s life, Alexandria was locked in a struggle between the ancient Greek ways and beliefs and the changing ideas of the Roman Christians who now ruled the city.

For most of Hypatia’s career, Alexandria had been under the control of the Roman prefect Orestes, a secular civil authority who admired Hypatia and her work. In 412, however, he was joined by Cyril, a Christian bishop who was determined to eliminate any threats to Christian domination. Cyril began an immediate campaign to eradicate all heretical teachings in Alexandria, including Judaism and Neoplatonism. Despite being warned, Hypatia refused to convert to Christianity or to stop teaching mathematics and Neoplatonism.

Many stories have been told of how Hypatia met her death, each more vivid and gory than the next. What seems irrefutable is that Cyril continued his oppression, inciting mob violence against those he labeled heretics. The city of Alexandria was in chaos, as Alexandrians were torn between loyalty to tradition and to the new rulers, between science and faith. According to one account, Cyril came to believe that he could increase his own standing by calling for a virgin sacrifice. Other accounts explain that Cyril saw Hypatia as an obstacle to his shared power with Orestes.

Whatever his reason, he let it be known that Hypatia was a Satanist, a witch whose charisma was the result of evil powers. One day during March in 415, as she made her way through the city in her chariot, Hypatia was surrounded by a mob of Christian fanatics, dragged to a nearby church, stripped naked, tortured, and killed. Her body was taken outside the city and burned. There is no real evidence that Cyril ordered her execution, but historians for sixteen centuries have assumed he was responsible. No investigation was ever performed; Orestes was replaced, and the Christian hold on Alexandria was advanced. Cyril was later named a Roman Catholic saint.

Significance

Hypatia was a talented philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer and a gifted teacher of all three disciplines. None of her accomplishments in these areas changed the world, although her name has been held in high regard for nearly sixteen centuries. Perhaps her greatest significance is as a symbol of her age, a marker of changing times. Hypatia, often called the “Divine Pagan,” is considered the last of the great pagan scientists; her death marked the end of an era. She was the last of the important Greek mathematicians; because of the fall of Alexandria shortly after her death, no important progress was made in Western mathematics for a thousand years. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the publication of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) and Charles Kingsley’s historical novelHypatia (1853), she was regarded as a symbol of courage in the face of an oppressive Christian Church.

For the women’s movement that came of age in the late twentieth century, she has also emerged as an important symbol, this time as a “first”: the first important woman philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. The leading journal of feminist philosophy is titled Hypatia, and its editors have stated, “Her name reminds us that although many of us are the first woman philosophers in our schools, we are not, after all, the first in history.”

Bibliography

Alic, Margaret. Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Beacon, 1986. Examines biographical and scientific evidence to reveal the lives and accomplishments of women in natural and physical sciences and mathematics. The material dealing with Hypatia claims for her the roles of the last important pagan scientist in the Western world and the representative of the end of ancient science.

Cameron, Alan, and Jacqueline Long. Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. A study of the Gothic rebellion and massacre under the reign of the Roman Emperor Arcadius in 399-400 c.e. Because one of the best contemporary accounts of these events was written by Synesius, a student of Hypatia, the book includes a clear and thorough discussion of Hypatia’s philosophy and accomplishments.

Dzielska, Maria. Hypatia of Alexandria. Translated by F. Lyra. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. Examines Hypatia as she appears in literature of the past sixteen hundred years and traces what can be confirmed of her biography. Also discusses her students and followers. Includes bibliography.

Kingsley, Charles. Hypatia. Chicago: W. B. Conkley, 1853. A historical romance novel based on Hypatia’s life. Kingsley was involved in the Christian Socialism movement and was strongly anti-Catholic. His interpretation of Hypatia’s death places the blame squarely on Cyril.

Molinaro, Ursule. “A Christian Martyr in Reverse: Hypatia.” In A Full Moon of Women. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1990. Included in this volume’s twenty-nine portraits of notable women is a feminist treatment of Hypatia’s brilliance, her refusal to live according to convention, and her murder at the hands of a tyrannical patriarchy.

Osen, Lynn M. Women in Mathematics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974. A historical study of women mathematicians from Hypatia through the early twentieth century and of the social contexts within which they worked. Includes a chapter devoted to Hypatia’s life and accomplishments as well as a chapter on “The Feminine Mathtique,” which discusses uses and abuses of stories of exceptional women.

Perl, Teri. Math Equals: Biographies of Women Mathematicians and Related Activities. Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1978. Includes a brief biography of Hypatia and a series of activities to familiarize students with the mathematics important to some of her written commentaries: Diophantine equations and the geometry of conic sections. Also offers mathematical games to introduce an overview of women in mathematics.