When was hypatia of alexandria born

He taught her the fundamentals of teaching, so that Hypatia became a profound orator. People from other cities came to study and learn from her. Hypatia's studies included astronomy, astrology, and mathematics. References in letters by Synesius, one of Hypatia's students, credit Hypatia with the invention of the astrolabe, a device used in studying astronomy. However, other sources date this instrument back at least a century earlier. Claudius Ptolemy wrote extensively on the projection used on the plane astrolabe, and Hypatia's father wrote an astrolabe treatise that was the basis for much of what was written later in the Middle Ages.

Hypatia did teach about astrolabes as Synesius had an instrument made that was arguably a form of astrolabe. Hypatia was known more for the work she did in mathematics than in astronomy, primarily for her work on the ideas of conic sections introduced by Apollonius.

She edited the work On the Conics of Apollonius , which divided cones into different parts by a plane. This concept developed the ideas of hyperbolas, parabolas, and ellipses. With Hypatia's work on this important book, she made the concepts easier to understand, thus making the work survive through many centuries.

Hypatia was the first woman to have such a profound impact on the survival of early thought in mathematics. Hypatia lived in Alexandria when Christianity started to dominate over the other religions. Meanwhile, Hypatia has become a symbol for feminists, a martyr to pagans and atheists and a character in fiction.

Voltaire used her to condemn the church and religion. The English clergyman Charles Kingsley made her the subject of a mid-Victorian romance. And she is the heroine, played by Rachel Weisz, in the Spanish movie Agora , which will be released later this year in the United States. The film tells the fictional story of Hypatia as she struggles to save the library from Christian zealots.

Neither paganism nor scholarship died in Alexandria with Hypatia, but they certainly took a blow. She may have been a victim of religious fanaticism, but Hypatia remains an inspiration even in modern times. Sarah Zielinski is an award-winning science writer and editor. She is a contributing writer in science for Smithsonian. However no purely philosophical work is known, only work in mathematics and astronomy. Based on this small amount of evidence Deakin, in [ 8 ] and [ 9 ] , argues that Hypatia was an excellent compiler, editor, and preserver of earlier mathematical works.

As mentioned above, some letters of Synesius to Hypatia exist. These ask her advice on the construction of an astrolabe and a hydroscope.

As Kramer writes in [ 1 ] :- Such works have perpetuated the legend that she was not only intellectual but also beautiful, eloquent, and modest. References show. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Oxford, E Craig ed. Monthly 3 , - I Mueller, Hypatia ? Additional Resources show. Synesius also worked with Hypatia on a graduated brass hydrometer, which measured the specific gravity of liquids, and a hydroscope, which was used to observe objects submerged in water.

At the age of 45 Hypatia was brutally murdered by a mob. The reasons behind her violent death are in dispute, though her personal independence and pagan beliefs seem to have created hostility among Alexandria's Christian community.

Another contributing factor appears to have been her alliance with Orestes, the pagan governor of the city, and a political adversary of Cyril c. After Hypatia was killed, her works perished, along with many other records of ancient learning, when mobs burned the library, destroying the entire collection.