AWM Book Review

Hypatia of Alexandria

Maria Dzielska, translated by F. Lyra. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1995. viii+157pp. ISBN 0-674-43775-6 (cloth). $29.95.

From: AWM Newsletter, May/June 1996.

Reviewed by: Marge Murray, Book Review Editor, Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0123; email: murray@calvin.math.vt.edu.

In March of 1994, the American Mathematical Monthly published an excellent article by Michael Deakin ([1]) dealing with the life and legend, but most importantly with the mathematics, of Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman mathematician for whom we have documentary evidence. Taken together with Maria Dzielska's new biographical treatment, Hypatia of Alexandria, published this fall by Harvard University Press, it is possible to construct a fairly complete picture of Hypatia: her life and times; her work as a teacher, mathematician, philosopher, and religious and political figure; and the circumstances of her violent death.

In the context of a course on the history of mathematics, Hypatia's appearance onstage is more than a little disappointing: the first known woman mathematician in history is far better known for her death than for her life. She was most likely born about 350 AD, though many sources place her birth in the year 370 AD, and spent her entire life in the city of Alexandria, until she was brutally murdered at the hands of a Christian mob in the year 415 or 416 AD (see [1], [3], and the book under review). In an attempt to present a much rounder picture of her life than is commonly offered, Dzielska draws upon the extant letters of her students, most notably Synesius, to demonstrate the significance of her role as a teacher of philosophy. Her book is also extremely valuable in its detailed description and debunking of the numerous latter-day myths surrounding her life and especially her death.

For several years I have been teaching my department's course in the history of mathematics, which is taken primarily by seniors majoring in mathematics and mathematics education. For most of them, it is among the last courses in mathematics that they will ever take. The class is frequently over 50% female. Women in the class, in particular, are often quite eager to write and reflect upon Hypatia. In a journal entry written in response to a classroom discussion of Hypatia, one young woman preparing for a career in high school mathematics teaching wrote that she could not understand why Hypatia was so important, since she was 'only' a teacher and editor. After all, the student wrote, even Hypatia's publications have been lost, and are only rumored to have existed. These comments are perhaps not surprising in light of the value that the mathematical community is inclined to place on the creation of new mathematics at the expense of the communication and preservation of the old (but I read these words with some alarm in view of the student's chosen vocation).

This same student speculated further that Hypatia's memory is kept alive solely for the polemical purpose of discrediting the claims of Christianity. Dzielska's first chapter, "The Literary Legend of Hypatia," tends to bear witness to the student's glib assertion. Hypatia came to life in European literature during the 18th century, and the story of her death has been used over and over again, with extreme license, by critics of the Church to the present day. More recently, Hypatia has been claimed by feminists; the image of a woman scientist martyred by a mob of Christian men has been used to dramatic effect. What is much less widely known is that the legend of the Roman Catholic saint, Catherine of Alexandria, borrows heavily from the legend of Hypatia (see pp. 12 and 21 of the book under review), which seems peculiar in light of the numerous ways in which Hypatia is identified as a victim of Christianity.

In her second and third chapters, Dzielska paints a picture of Hypatia and her role in the cultural and political life of Alexandria that helps to explain the seemingly contradictory polemical purposes to which her life story has been put. Through the eyes of her students, whose letters to and about her have been preserved, Hypatia emerges as a revered teacher of philosophy and mathematics, a member of the Neoplatonist school, and as such, a respected teacher of Christians, pagans, and possibly Jews. In the fourth and fifth century AD, Alexandria was under the rule of a Roman prefect. Christianity was the official state religion, and religious matters were overseen by the bishop. Despite the official preeminence of Christianity, other beliefs and practices were tolerated to varying degrees. This mood of tolerance began to decline under the bishopric of Cyril, which began in 412 AD. Cyril's ascendance was a matter of violent dispute in Alexandria, and there was great enmity between Cyril and Orestes, the civil prefect, a professing Christian. Dzielska argues that it was the friendship between Hypatia and Orestes that angered Cyril, leading him to conduct a propaganda campaign against her, discrediting her as a witch. Her brutal death at the hands of a mob of monks, while not clearly instigated by Cyril, was carried out by a group that was loyal to him.

While Hypatia's murder was the misogynist act of a Christian mob, Dzielska's book makes it clear that it is misleading to portray Hypatia's death as the violent defeat of the female and non-Christian by the male and Christian. Christian men were at least as numerous among the supporters and admirers of Hypatia as among her opponents. It is probably more instructive to draw parallels to life in modern Belfast, Beirut, or even Sarajevo (as Deakin is inclined to do in [1], page 236), than to portray her death as the result of a sharply delineated ideological or religious conflict.

It is often difficult to describe to students, accustomed as they are to the compartmentalization of the disciplines, that in Greek civilization the borders between philosophy, religion, mathematics, and astronomy were far less distinct than now. Since Dzielska is a cultural historian, her emphasis is on the aspects of Hypatia's work that are clearly philosophical. Dzielska identifies Hypatia's main philosophical concerns as "ontology and ethics," portraying the "mathematical sciences" as being "auxiliary to metaphysical knowledge" (p. 54). On the other hand, Deakin (as a mathematician and historian of mathematics) asserts that Hypatia was known first and foremost as a teacher of mathematics --- her work in astronomy and philosophy being somewhat subordinate to this --- and secondarily as a commentator upon the works of earlier Greek mathematicians ([1], pp. 237-8, 241-2). It is from this tension between Dzielska's cultural/philosophical viewpoint and Deakin's more explicitly mathematical perspective --- clearly reflected in Deakin's own recent review of Dzielska's book ([2]) --- that the clearest picture of Hypatia that we have had to date begins to emerge.

References

1. Deakin, Michael A.B., "Hypatia and Her Mathematics," The American Mathematical Monthly 101 (March 1994) #3, 234-243.

2. Deakin, Michael A.B., Review of Hypatia of Alexandria by M. Dzielska, The American Mathematical Monthly 103(January 1996)#1, 83-86.

3. Mueller, Ian, "Hypatia," in Louise Grinstein and Paul Campbell, Women of Mathematics: a Biobibliographic Sourcebook, Greenwood Press, New York, 1987.