Hypatia - Works

Works

No written work, widely recognized by scholars as Hypatia's own has survived to the present time. Many of the works commonly attributed to her are believed to have been collaborative works with her father, Theon Alexandricus, this kind of authorial uncertainty being typical for female philosophers in Antiquity.

A partial list of Hypatia's works as mentioned by other antique and medieval authors or as posited by modern authors:

• A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.
• A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius.
• Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest.
• Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements
• She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon". (Either a new edition of Ptolemy's Handy Tables or the aforementioned Almagest.)

Her contributions to science are reputed to include the charting of celestial bodies and the invention of the hydrometer, used to determine the relative density (or specific gravity) of liquids. However, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time.

Her student Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, wrote a letter describing his construction of an astrolabe. Earlier astrolabes predate that of Synesius by at least a century, and Hypatia's father had gained fame for his treatise on the subject. However, Synesius claimed that his was an improved model. Synesius also sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him.