Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Naomi Alderman's tale is a murder mystery, the story of Hypatia, the mathematician murdered by a mob in the learned city of Alexandria, around the year 415 CE. Hypatia was a communicator of science, tackling difficult maths and teaching it to her students. This was incredibly important work. It was enough, at the time, to make her Alexandria’s pre-eminent mathematician, and probably therefore the leading mathematician in the world. And there’s historical evidence that Hypatia made some discoveries and innovations of her own. She invented a new and more efficient method of long division. In a time before electronic calculators, the actual business of doing sums was an arduous part of engineering or astronomy, and any improvement in efficiency was very welcome. All quite innocent science, so why did Hypatia end up being murdered by a mob? Natalie Haynes tells the inside story to Naomi Alderman. And Professor Edith Hall discusses Hypatia's legacy. Picture: Death of Hypatia of Alexandria (c 370 CE - March 415 AD), Credit: Nastasic/Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Discovery and I'm Naomi Alderman and this is science stories from the BBC.
0:06.0	This is a murder mystery. Not a who-done it or a how-done it, but a question of why?
0:14.0	In the middle of the first millennium, around the year 415,
0:20.0	in the learned city of Alexandria, the one with the famous library.
0:24.0	A scholarly woman died, worse than died.
0:28.0	She was torn apart by a mob who, according to some accounts, used roof tiles or oyster shells to cut the living
0:36.5	flesh from her body. She'd been a teacher, a lecturer, a philosopher and a mathematician.
0:50.0	The last person you might think would excite the fury of religious
0:54.0	fundamentalists and yet this acute and intelligent woman was murdered by a group
0:59.7	of early Christians.
1:03.6	This is the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, of her life of science and of her death, which,
1:10.6	spoiler, remains a mystery to this day.
1:14.0	As with many ancient figures, we don't have a huge amount to go on when it comes to Hypatia.
1:20.0	Her own works are lost to history, but her existence and life is attested by several ancient historical sources, so there are a few clear facts.
1:31.0	Like most educated women until pretty recently, Hypatia was able to study because she was the daughter of a learned man.
1:38.0	Her father was Theon of Alexandria, an astronomer and prolific author who edited and wrote commentaries on the works of
1:45.8	thinkers like Euclid. But according to one philosopher, Hypatia far exceeded her father's
1:52.0	realms of learning.
1:54.0	Since she was by nature of a more noble disposition than her father,
1:58.0	she was not content with the mathematical education she received from her father's hand, but was led by her
2:05.3	noble enthusiasm into the other branches of philosophy.
2:09.6	One ancient historian agreed that Hypatia's learning was remarkable and so was her ability in public speaking.
	...

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