EUROPEAN SCIENTISTS

HYPATHIA FROM ALEXANDRIA
Hypathia was born between the years 350 and 370, and was murdered in the year 415 in Alexandria, Egypt, accused of creating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria. She was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, but her main interests were mathematics and astronomy. She was used as a symbolic of Virtue.

She was educated at Athens, and around the year 400, she became the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, which were philosophy and astronomy, to students, including pagans, Christians, and foreigners.

Her death is symbolic for some historians. Some claim that her murder marked the end of the Classical antiquity; and others observe that it "effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life".

Some say that one of her contributions to science was the hydrometer, a clock that works with water and gears used to determine the relative density (or specific gravity) of liquids. However, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and it was already known in her time.