Hypatia of Alexandria
(355 or 370 - 415/416 A.D.)
"She was a fine philosopher -- for a woman" when hearing about ancient female prodigies. The were "respectable" women, were nearly non-existent.
This woman, however, defies all such qualifiers.
Hypatia was, simply, the last great Alexandrian mathematician and philosopher. By writing a commentary on The Conics of Apollonius of Perga which divided cones into sections by a plane, Hypatia made geometry intelligible to…
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