06/02/2019

A semi-legendary woman, Hypatia was the first female mathematician.

Gravura de Hipátia feita por Elbert Hubbard em 1908 – Reprodução

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

She is celebrated as the first female mathematician in history. A woman of strong personality who, in a male-dominated society, gathered around her a brilliant circle of disciples who…
They admired her. Who was Hypatia of Alexandria?
Historical sources are scarce. Worse, her life and the tragic circumstances of her death have made her an icon for diverse, even contradictory, causes in which she probably had no part.
It would be recognized. The legend has obscured the facts.

For the pagan philosophers of the final phase of the Roman Empire, it represented resistance to Christianity. In the Middle Ages, it was converted into a symbol of Christianity: aspects of its life.
They were incorporated into the legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (who gives her name to the Brazilian state). For Enlightenment thinkers, it symbolized opposition to Christianity. In the 19th century
In 2020, she was reinvented as a precursor to feminism.
Hypatia was murdered in 415, but the year of her birth is unknown: it is estimated to have been around 355. She was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer.
Renowned and director of the Mouseion, a prestigious elite school where Neoplatonic philosophy was taught.
Much of what little we know about Hypatia comes from the writings of her disciples. She attracted widespread admiration, both for her teachings and her moral authority, including the frugality of her life and dress, and the virginity she is said to have maintained throughout her life.
There is no evidence that he ever left Alexandria. It was not a democratic environment: in keeping with Plato's thinking, teachers and students at the Mouseion avoided contact with the masses, whom they considered incapable of understanding higher knowledge.
It is believed that part of the "Almagest" of the astronomer Ptolemy that has come down to us is authored by Hypatia. She also wrote commentaries on Diophantus' "Arithmetica" and on the works of Apollonius of Perga on conic sections, which have been lost.

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