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Life
Mathematician, astronomer, and the last great teacher of Alexandria, killed for standing at the center of its conflicts.
The most dangerous writer of the eighteenth century. He used wit as a weapon and spent his life fighting ignorance, superstition, and cruelty in their most powerful forms.
Connection
Hypatia remembered as a martyr to fanaticism Voltaire — Voltaire returned to Hypatia's murder repeatedly as his clearest illustration of what religious zeal does to learning, and it was largely through the Enlightenment's retelling that her name reached modern memory.
Ideas
Words
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
“To hold a pen is to be at war.”
Key Moments
c. 355 CE
Born in Alexandria
c. 390 CE
Astrolabe and Hydrometer
c. 400 CE
Head of the Alexandrian School
415 CE
Murdered in Alexandria
1694 CE
Born in Paris
1734 CE
Letters on England
1759 CE
Candide
1778 CE
Death in Paris
Works
Mathematical Commentaries
Candide
Treatise on Tolerance