Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia of Alexandria, the principal head of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school of the late Roman Egyptian tradition, was born about 360 CE at Alexandria of the principal Roman Diocese of Egypt, the principal daughter of the principal mathematician and astronomer Theon of Alexandria — the principal then-head of the Alexandrian mathematical tradition and editor of the principal edition of Euclid's Elements that survived to the Byzantine and Islamic mathematical canon.

She was raised across the principal late fourth century in the principal Alexandrian intellectual environment — and was instructed by her father Theon in the principal Euclidean geometric and Apollonian conic canon of the Alexandrian mathematical tradition, the principal Ptolemaic astronomical canon of the principal Alexandrian Almagest tradition (the Mathematike Syntaxis of Claudius Ptolemy of about 150 CE), and the principal Plotinian and Porphyrian Neoplatonic philosophy of the principal Alexandrian school.

She assumed about 400 CE the principal headship of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school on her father Theon's death, and conducted across the principal years 400 to 415 CE the principal mathematical, astronomical and philosophical instruction of the principal Alexandrian intellectual elite — among her principal students the principal future bishop Synesius of Cyrene (whose letters preserve the principal Hypatian record) and the principal Alexandrian prefects Orestes and Hesychius.

She authored across the principal first decade of the fifth century the principal commentary on the principal Conics of Apollonius of Perga, the principal commentary on the principal Arithmetic of Diophantus of Alexandria, and the principal canon of the principal Ptolemaic Almagest (preserved in the principal Theon-and-Hypatia recension of Book III). She designed the principal astrolabe, the principal hydroscope, and the principal hydrometer of the Alexandrian instrument-making tradition — instruments preserved in the principal Synesian correspondence with their principal Hypatian provenance.

She was murdered at Alexandria in March 415 CE by a Christian Parabalani mob of the patriarchate of Cyril of Alexandria — set upon by the principal lector Peter at the principal Caesareum church, dragged into the church, stripped, killed by the principal abrading of her body with oyster shells, dismembered, and burned at the principal Cinaron pyre — a political murder consequent upon the principal Orestes-Cyril controversy of 415 over the principal jurisdictional autonomy of the Alexandrian prefecture. She was about fifty-five. She is honored here as the principal head of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school and the principal foundational woman of the global mathematical record.