Hypatia, Scientist of Alexandria, 8th March 415 A. D.

Hypatia (370415 A.D.), heiress to the Alexandrian School, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and forerunner of experimental science, conceived of and constructed the astrolabe, the hydroscope and the aerometre. Adriano Petta and Antonino Colavito have written this book, consisting of two themes intertwined like a double helix, to honour the memory of Reason's first martyr, who preferred to be slaughtered rather than giving up her freedom of thought. The first focuses on Hypatia as a woman and describes her daily activities (private, scientific and political) in an accurately reconstructed historical context, recounting a life that becomes more and more dramatic till brought to an end as described in a shattering epilogue. The second theme is the voice of Hypatia which, punctuating the first with episodes or 'dreams', describes her research work. It is through the latter that she teaches and communicates with those who listen to her, both academics and ordinary people, as a master of scientific knowledge the origins of which go back at least a thousand years before her time, and which the demise of the Hellenic world and the triumph of Christianity was to bury for many centuries, until the birth of modern science, from Galileo onwards.