Ada LoveLace Day: Hypatia

I joined Ada Lovelace Day and agreed to write a blog post about a woman in science/technology. I decided to tell you about Hypatia.

Hypatia lived in Alexandria from about 350-415 C.E. She was a mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. There isn't a lot of historical information about her, what we know is from letters others wrote referencing her work and life. She was described by a contemporary as a woman who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time.

Some of her works include:
Wrote The Astronomical Canon
A Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus
A Commentary on the Conics of Apollonious
Edited Commentary on the Almagest of Ptolemy
Edited Commentary on Euclid's Elements

Evidence suggests she invented or contributed to the invention of the Hydrometer.

She led a very public life and was the Director of the Neoplatonist School at Alexandria.Unfortunately it wasn't the best time to be a woman, a pagan and a public figure. Believed to be supporting the wrong side in a quarrel between the Bishop Cyril and Alexandria's Governor, Orestes, she was, according to sources, dragged from her chariot, stripped, killed, the flesh stripped from her bones and her body parts scattered. Accounts differ somewhat in what happened but none of them sound pleasant.

Her story has been romanticized in literature and she has also had, among other things, an asteroid and a lunar crater named after her.