Opening of the exhibition Saturday, December 27, 2014 at 16.00.
The Mateureka Museum, 1.600 years after the death of Hypatia in Alexandria, intends to honor this scientist. Of his life, and even more than his death, he was told of everything; he was celebrated and idealized, but also mixed and misunderstood. In order not to add words to words, we wish to remember, based on historical documents, its contribution as inherent. Speaking of Hypatia, it is not possible to remember the other women of mathematics and, more generally, the role of women in science that we would like to deepen, in the margin of the exhibition, with a conference.
Some short flashes on Hypatia, taken from the presentation-relationship of the exhibition:
- “There was a woman then in Alexandria, whose name was Hypatia. He was the daughter of Theon, philosopher of the school of Alexandria, and had arrived at such a summit of wisdom to overcome by far all the philosophers of his circle", thus narrates a Christian historian of 15 centuries ago, Socrates Scolastico, lawyer to the court of Constantinople...
- Sometimes we do not enter into historical, political or religious considerations that do not compel us; our only desire is to honor Hypatia, symbol of freedom of thought, recalling his contribution as mathematics.
- In hangers We analyze some mathematical arguments that, according to the sources, Hypatia treated remembering that no unequivocally written was found. His comments either have been lost or are frammisti at the original work and it is impractical to separate them from it. It is true that the most important mind of his time was considered by his contemporaries.
- The museum and library of Alexandria, at the time of Hypatia, were an institution with about seven centuries of history. Teone, father of Hypatia, was professor of the museum and Hypatia became director around the year 400. (The tab is taken from the volume Mathematics AncientPublished by the Mateureka Museum
- Hypatia is the first woman in which we have reasonable information documented. The history of mathematics contains very few women before the 20th century and even today the mathematics is a predominantly male occupation.
- On the edge of the exhibition on Hypatia, the Mateureka Museum wants to open a debate that could also include a conference on role of women in science, focused on the marginalization generally suffered by women not only in mathematics but in science in general; on the dominant “masculization of science” and on the poor attention of historians, and of scientists themselves, on research and scientific enterprises carried out over the centuries by women.
- We wish, with the following list (Appendix 9), not exhaustive, to honor and declare our greatest admiration for these that not only were great mathematicians but also people able to overcome the most inestiparable prejudices.
