Hypatia- No Library named after her
We stand on the shoulders of giants, male giants; who stand on the heads of women, female giants…
No library named after Hypatia, but her legacy is everywhere else:
Hypatia of Alexandria
Hypatia, daughter of Theon, the last head librarian of the great Library of Alexandria, was a prominent 4th-century, female scholar; the first woman to make significant contributions to mathematics and was a professor and philosopher at the Mouseion, which was affiliated with the great library of Alexandria…
Early Life and Education
- Birth: 350–370 AD in Alexandria, Egypt.
- Family: daughter of Theon of Alexandria, a mathematician and philosopher…last head librarian of the Great Library…
- Education: Theon on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy…the Great Library was her playpen…
- Career: Head of Neoplatonic school in Alexandria…
Contributions and Influence
- Mathematics and Astronomy:
- work on conic sections;
- commentaries on the works of Diophantus and Apollonius,
- constructed instruments like astrolabes and hydrometers.
- Teaching: As a prominent teacher, she attracted many students from across the Eastern Roman Empire, including notable figures like Synesius of Cyrene.
- Cultural Symbol:
- romanticized in literature…
- icon for women's rights and intellectual freedom...
- symbol of the role of women in science and philosophy…
Her Death
- Murder: March 415 AD
- by a mob of Christian zealots…
- Led by Peter the Lector, at the instigation of…
- Archbishop Cyril of Alexandria, because of her support of a political rival…
- Orestes, the Roman Prefect…
- Archbishop Cyril of Alexandria, because of her support of a political rival…
- Impact:
- shocked the empire and
- transformed her into a martyr for philosophy,
Symbolizing the struggle between paganism and the rising influence of Christianity.
She was effectively the last scholar of the Library. Murdered in 415 AD by a Christian mob who stripped her, beat her to death with roofing tiles, tore her body apart and burned it.
The first woman mathematician, astronomer and philosopher whose name we know; killed because she stood at the intersection of knowledge and power.
The Overton window of 5th century Alexandria: learning became
- unthinkable, then
- heretical, then
- fatal…
- heretical, then
No library bears her name. The library that should have, the great library of Alexandria, was destroyed by the same forces that killed her.
The daughter of the last librarian of the greatest repository of knowledge in history, murdered by people who burned that knowledge, and then overlooked by the history that followed.
The library destroyed, the woman destroyed, and both forgotten, magicked away…yet, both foundational to the knowledge that followed…
On a more modern note, her name lives on…Two feminist journals are named after her:
- the Greek journal Hypatia: Feminist Studies (launched 1984)…
- Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy in the US…
Other memorials…
- A planet, Iota Draconis b, was named after her in 2015…
- She has a place setting in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party..
- Rachel Weisz played her in Agora (2009)…
Rosalind Franklin
A very little known, and kept that way, was the X-ray crystallographer whose Photo 51 was the key to DNA’s double helix structure…that was leveraged to a Nobel prize by…
- Watson and Crick, who, of course…
- used her data without her knowledge or consent…
- Nobel Prize went to Watson, Crick and Wilkins…
She died at 37 of ovarian cancer, likely caused by radiation exposure from her work and…
the Nobel isn’t awarded posthumously…
an ironic caveat for a prize in the name of the
- ‘merchant of death’;
- the man responsible for every bullet fired since 1887…
- Every. Single. Harm. By. Bullet. Since 1887…
- the man responsible for every bullet fired since 1887…
Perhaps just,
- that the woman who gave men the key to life, is not recognised by the ‘merchant of death’…
Ada Lovelace
wrote the first computer program, for Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a century before computers existed. Recognised as a visionary by nobody in her lifetime…
Aphra Behn
first professional female writer in English. Spy for Charles II. Wrote 19 plays, novels, poems.
- Virginia Woolf said
- “all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”
Marie Curie
two Nobel Prizes, two different sciences. Died of aplastic anaemia from radiation exposure…
- she so loved the sparkling, radioactive radium, she carried it in a test tube in her pocket to show it off)…
- her notebooks are still too radioactive to handle without protective clothing…
Lise Meitner
co-discovered nuclear fission.
- Otto Hahn got the Nobel.
She got overlooked…
Emmy Noether
Einstein called her the most important woman in the history of mathematics…
- Noether’s theorem underpins modern physics…
- Fled Nazi Germany,
- died in exile..
- Unknown…
- Fled Nazi Germany,
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
discovered that stars are made primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her supervisor told her she was wrong.
- She was right.
- He later admitted it was
- “undoubtedly the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy.”…
We stand on the shoulders of giants, male giants; who stand on the heads of women, female giants…
To all female giants… have this inscribed on your tombstone…
“do the work,
lose the credit,
die early,
get a footnote”