Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician

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 presenter of "Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics" tells the inside story to Naomi Alderman. And Professor Edith Hall discusses Hypatia's legacy.

You can listen to Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician is an episode from Science Stories by BBC.

This episode is 27:40 long.

This episode was published on Jul 4, 2018.

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