Alexandri Hypatia Essay

Hypatia was a Greek mathematician, philosopher and astronomer. Her date of birth is still unknown nevertheless it is roughly estimated to be AD 370. She was born in Alexandria which was, after Rome, the second most important city in the Roman Empire at that time. Her father, “Theon”, was also a mathematician and an astronomer. He, along with his daughter, had a significant role in preserving the classical mathematical heritage of the Greek civilization. She is believed to have been killed at the age of 45 by a group of Christian bigots. Her murder was portrayed in the 2009 Spanish movie, “Agora”. In addition, her life was retold yet modified to some extent by the Egyptian novelist “Youssef Zidan” in his Booker winning novel, “Azazil”.
In the fourth century,
Those commentaries were the only way through which those works survived and reached us. She wrote a commentary on Apollonius’s Conics, Diophantus’s Arithmatic and an astronomical table. A letter from her student “Synesius” is considered in which he asked her to make him a hydrometer is considered evidence that she knew how to make it. In another letter, Synesius tells that he designed an astrolabe with the help of Hypatia. Tracing evidence lead historians to the conclusion that the theory and the details of the astrolabe’s construction was passed down from Theon to Hypatia, who applied them practically. Hypatia was also a philosopher. Her philosophy was Neoplatonic as she studied philosophy at the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria. Platonism is based on a belief that there are constant eternal realities which “Plato” called “Forms”. Some researchers could explain how Hypatia exceled at both Philosophy and Mathematics on the basis of the fact that Hypatia was Neoplatonic. Mathematics tends to abstract the materialistic world into mere ideas. Platonism has exactly the same