Hypatia

Hypatia 2013

Acrylic on canvas board 20 X 30″

This 4th – 5th Century philosopher/mathematician investigated and taught the geometry of cones, and by extension, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas. She was head of a Plato Academy in Alexandria and a defender of the famous, but ultimately doomed library of that historical center of classical civilization. She too, was doomed to be murdered by a mob of anti-intellectual monks, but her service to mathematics, to civilization and to the status of women is eternal.