Return to AWM Bibliography AWM Newsletter 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. 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. | |
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