History Atlas

How The Past Is Known
Historical Figures

Hypatia

Philosophers and Scholars

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Hypatia (c. 355-415 CE) was a mathematician, astronomer and Neoplatonist philosopher who taught in Alexandria, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire, where she headed a school of philosophy and was renowned as one of the leading scholars of her era. She is credited with commentaries on earlier mathematical works, including those of Diophantus and Apollonius, though little of her own writing survives directly. In 415 she was murdered by a mob of Christian zealots amid the political and religious tensions of the city, and her death has since become a widely cited symbol of the destruction of classical learning and of violence against women in intellectual life.

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.