I have good hope that there is something after death. This is a quote by Plato that I chose to use for the first chapter of my recently published book, Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life. This quote is so profound to me because her legacy continued to live on after Hypatia’s death. Some were negative, some were propaganda, and
The story of her life is an intriguing one! She was a mathematician, an astronomer, a philosopher, and a political advisor, yet she was brutally murdered by church monks. For thousands of years, her death overshadowed her accomplishments. But, eventually, the truth of her life finally surfaced in the history books. Damascius wrote that Theon raised Hypatia with dikaeosyne (justice) and
Hypatia lived in Alexandria in the fourth and fifth centuries as a mathematician and philosopher. However, she is most famous for the way in which she died.
There is a paper on Academia that I posted years ago, proudly claiming that Hypatia was the world’s first female mathematician. It’s humbling what years of research will teach you. It so turns out that Hypatia was NOT the world’s first female mathematician. Other women taught mathematics long before Hypatia, including the mathematician Pandrosion. She was one of the first
During my visit to the Getty Villa, in Malibu, California, I discovered this stunning sculpture! This is a Roman sculpture of three of the nine muses. It dates back to the mid-third century BCE and was part of a large sarcophagus. The sculpture shows four individuals. The original sculpture held eight individuals, which included two more muses and two men.
Over the last three years, I have committed over 700 days working on a project about Alexandria, Egypt, the history of Alexandria, the works of the intellectuals, and of course Hypatia, who was an absolute academic STEM hero in every possible way. Working through this project, I found myself immersed in this idea about what it would be like to completely
It is in history that we understand who we are as a collective and who we are as individuals, it is whom we seek to be and whom we become. What value do we place on history? I could not think of a better time to honor the importance of historical preservation than in July, the month that honors Julius