Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.1]

Chapter Twenty-one

(Alexandrian Library, Egypt 403 CE)

Hypatia's love of mathematics and philosophy sprang mostly from her father's influence. As last librarian and caretaker of the Museum of Alexandria, it was true that Theon Alexandricus would eventually be considered the last mathematical genius of that incomparable center of learning and repository of thought. While serving as the Museum's "president," he authored many treatises during his tenure of forty years, overseeing the exceptional training of many and none the least, that of his daughter, Hypatia. But there were other academics before him and her who carried this great school to its prominence in the world of mathematics, philosophy and astronomy.

Euclid, the Greek mathematician, considered the father of Geometry, had written his "Elements" there in the 3rd century BC. It was a seminal work which became a primary inspiration to many generations of mathematicians who had come to study in Alexandria from Athens, Rome, and parts of Asia and Africa. Hypatia's father lectured on these principals and contributed to the discovery of the solar and lunar ellipses while in residence, and at the same time handled the Museum's administrative affairs.

In addition, the Library was famous for its PlatonistSchool, originating in Athens some one-thousand years before through the writings and dialectics of Plato. The philosophy was brought to Egypt through the teachings of Ammonius Saccas in the third century AD, and later expanded upon by his own student of eleven years, Plotinus. It was Plotinus's mistrust of the material world, with its many limitations, which led him to embrace the notion of Plato's purely spiritual element to all things, inspiring later religions and philosophies to evolve in this direction through what became Neo-Platonism.

Aligning herself with Alexandria's Platonist school, Hypatia taught these refined theories there on the Nile delta, while her father mentored in mathematics. Through his administrative clout, and her exceptional talents as a philosopher, Hypatia ultimately became the headmistress of the PlatonistSchool of the Alexandrian Library, where she taught until her untimely murder in 415 CE.

Hypatia's attractiveness and engaging discussions became renowned, not only for her open-minded approach to learning and democratic ideas, but for her compelling infusion of the sciences, particularly mathematics and astronomy, into her more philosophical inquires. This produced a fascinating balance for her students, having on the one hand the Aristotelian observation of the physical world-leading to new and dramatic discoveries about nature-and on the other, the Platonic influences of an unseen world. Her approach to attaining truth was often across the nary world between matter and spirit which contained the greater essence of things.

This combination was educationally rich-eliciting mental and spiritual dialogues among her and her internationally-comprised classes of all young males. For Hypatia, and for a time in her incomparable milieu of the Alexandrian Library, these two paradigms of thought complemented many belief systems, religious and scientific, rather than divided them.

It was for this reason that Hypatia naturally embraced mathematics and its application to the heavens. Working with her father's discoveries of the elliptical orbits of celestial bodies, and studying conic sections and parabolas on her own, she is today given credit for at least proposing the first model of the astrolabe, a device which attempted to duplicate the elliptical motion of the sun, moon, and known planets in their relative positions. Moreover, her Platonic underpinnings, in concert with an astute understanding of the most advanced principles of geometry, put her at the cutting edge of philosophical thought and the calculated notions about astronomy at the time of her father's death in 405 CE.