The first woman of mathematics

11/06/2012 20:58

Today I´m gonna talk about a character that inspires me a lot, she is Hypatia of Alexandria. In the times of the Roman Empire, women participation was a very special exception, but Hypatia not only enter in the knowledge world but also reached the highest intellectual levels and taught at Rome´s Library. Hypatia was an exceptional woman who dedicated her whole life to study math, astronomy and philosophy. Is also said that Hypatia was really beautiful, she was capable to attract even his enemies. Hypatia was the first woman mathematician known.

She was considered a threat, because she hadn´t converted to Christianity (this religion was imposing at that epoch), this is the reason why she was accused to be a witch and atheist, you probably are imaging what happened later. It is said that with her death all the advances she done in math disappeared, because her disciples didn´t save them for fear to authority. This knowledge didn’t reappear until 1200 years later with the renaissance.

I found recently that a movie was produced from her story! Maybe you´re thinking the idea is kind of boring, but this is a really interesting movie in which you will see action, fights, philosophy, science, politics, secrets, romance. The movie shows the story developed in the times in which Christians take violently many territories, all this seen by hypatia´s perspective and what happened to her for witnessing such situations. This movie was made in 2009 so it has a good quality of video.