Ancient Science · Part 24 · Late Alexandria · B2
Theon and Hypatia: A Father and Daughter Edit the Classics, and a City Turns Violent
Part 24 of Ancient Science: Theon edited Euclid and Ptolemy for the centuries to come, and his daughter Hypatia taught mathematics and philosophy to pagans and Christians alike, until she was murdered by a mob in 415. Sophia tells what the sources say, how each side told her story, and what modern legends have added. She was teaching when…, the Serapeum had been destroyed, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight I look four hundred years ahead, to the last mathematicians of this city: a father, Theon, and his daughter, Hypatia.
Mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, to students who came from far away to hear her. And she was killed by a mob in the streets of this city. I will tell you how, but not in cruel detail, and I will tell you what is known and what has been added since.
Many people have told her story to suit their own purposes. Let me show you.
Theon was a mathematician and astronomer who was teaching in Alexandria in the late fourth century. He wrote commentaries on Ptolemy and made a new edition of Euclid’s Elements, correcting and explaining the text. For centuries almost every copy of Euclid came from Theon’s edition, as you heard in Part 8.
His daughter Hypatia was born sometime between about 350 and 370. She worked with her father, and one of his commentaries on Ptolemy says it was checked by “the philosopher Hypatia, my daughter”. Later sources say she wrote commentaries on Diophantus and Apollonius, but they are lost, or cannot be identified with certainty.
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