HYPATIA (370-415 A.D.)

Mathematician and natural philosopher

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Hypatia is among the first women known to have participated in the male-dominated scientific and academic world. Her father was a mathematician and director of the great University of Alexandria, and she eventually became one of the university's most popular teachers, lecturing on Platonic philosophy, mathematics and astronomy.

She is thought to have written commentaries on Diophantus's Arithmetica and the Conics of Appollonius, texts on mathematics and grammar, respectively, and assisted her father in revising Euclid's Elements, the oldest surviving Greek mathematical work. Hypatia's edition of the Elements is used today.

Letters from Hypatia's students indicate that she designed scientific instruments including an astrolabe to determine the position of stars, planets and the sun, and developed an apparatus for distilling water, an instrument for determining water levels and a hydrometer, which measured "specific gravity" of liquids. Today, such devices are used to check a car battery's charge by testing the acid.

Hypatia ran afoul of Christian zealots, who believed science and mathematics were enemies of their religion. In 415, according to historians, a group including monks from the Church of St. Cyril dragged Hypatia into a church and murdered her.

Scholars say the murder signified the end of Platonic teaching in Alexandria and the Roman Empire. Interest in mysticism and astrology soon replaced scientific research and reasoning that Plato, and neo-Platonists such as Hypatia, had espoused.