You're Dead to Me - Hypatia of Alexandria (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in late antique Egypt by Professor Edith Hall and comedian Olga Koch to learn about the life of mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria.An important mathematical and astronomical thinker, Hypatia is best known today for her brutal death at the hands of Christian fundamentalists. Born to a well-respected mathematician named Theon in fourth-century Alexandria, Hypatia received an unusually advanced education for a woman, and eventually took over her father’s school. But with the city in which she lived riven by religious and political conflicts during the declining days of the Roman empire, she came to the attention of radical Christians – with fatal consequences.In this episode we explore Hypatia’s trailblazing life as a philosopher and mathematician, and her afterlife as a martyr for intellectual enquiry, and as a certified feminist icon.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Adam Simcox Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we are grabbing our maths textbooks and frolicing back to the 4th century to Egypt to learn all about mathematician and philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria. And to help us, we have one terrific teacher and one sublime student in History Corner. She's Professor of Classics at Durham University. You might have heard her on Natalie Haynes stands up for the classics

or Great Lives on BBC Radio 4. Maybe you've read one of her many books, including Aristotle's Way, how ancient wisdom can change your life and facing down the furies. And you'll know her from our episodes on Pythagoras, The Triangle Guy, and Aristotle. It's Professor Edith Hall. Welcome back, Edith. Hello, I'm thrilled to be here. Delighted to have you back.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, writer and actor. You'll have seen her on Mock the Week, QI, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, late-night Mash. or you've heard her co-hosting the BBC's funny technology podcast Human Era. Maybe you've seen her award nominated stand-up show Olga Koch comes from money. And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes on Ivan the Terrible and vital electricity. It's Olga Koch. Welcome back, Olga. Thank you so much for having me.

Delighted to have you here. Olga, previously on the show, you said that your history knowledge is basically all the American presidents, and that's it. Yeah. I mean, the thing is even that was lying, I think maybe half of them had promised. Okay, I was going to ask you, who's the 12th American president? Oh, fourth. 12th? Oh, God. Never mind.

John Adams is somewhere in there. He's quite early, let's be honest. Is he earlier than fourth? Yeah. Is he second? Yeah. Oh, boy. This is bad.

This is bad. Shut it down. Okay. You are doing a PhD right now. Yes. Crucially not in history. I would like your listeners to know. But you're a woman in STEM, right?

Yes. Proudly so. Good. So, have you heard of Hypatia of Alexandria? If I'm being completely honest, I only found out that she was a mathematician, but I want to say 30 seconds ago. She's going to be a very, very fun episode, if anything, just for me. So, what do you know?

Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast, which is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subjects. You might know from the introduction, like Olga has just discovered, that Hypatia was a philosopher and mathematician. She's a bigger name in recent years, thanks to the 2009 film, Agura, starring Rachel Weiss, but you may also know Hypatia from a 1987 episode of Doctor Who, where she's one of several geniuses kidnapped to build a superbrain. I did not see that episode.

I've not seen any episodes of Doctor Who. But what's the truth? That's really not on brand for you at all. I know. I give off real Doctor Who energy, but I've never seen it. But what's the truth behind the dramatic Hollywood Hypatia? How much of a genius? Was she really?

And what on earth is a conic section? Let's find out. Right, Professor Edith. When we did our Pythagoras episode, It turned out we couldn't trust anything written about him by anyone. A lot of fun, but not hugely helpful. Are we on firmer historical ground with Hypatia of Alexandria? We are on slightly firm.

You immediately caveated. Slightly firmer historical ground, because we've got two sources that are approximately contemporary with her, as well as one or two that are quite a lot later. So we've actually got some letters by a guy called Cinesis of Cyrene, Sireini, who was some kind of student or acolyte of her. Sireenies in Libya. So this is, we're talking about the North African Greek intellectual diaspora.

He seems to have absolutely adored her, wanted to send her his work and his ideas. She doesn't seem to have answered very much. And at some point, at some point stopped contacting him. But the respect he holds her in is very indicative. Okay, so Sainisius of Sirene, what a name. He's a bit of a fan boy. Olga, you are an expert in reply guys. Wow, what a swerve. I like that.

Are you on firm historical territory here? This is the psychology of people who write back? I guess so. It's very interesting. So basically my master's was about reply guys, which are a catch-all slang term for men who, I guess, incessantly respond to women who don't act like they exist on the internet in a sort of very casual and very, I guess, like buddy-buddy fashion that's overly familiar.

This guy kind of recontextualizes it. It's not a modern phenomenon. It's been around. What other sources do we have for Hypatia? We have the letters of her fan boy, Sanisius, and we have this. We've got the biography by Socrates, the scholar, another guy called Damascus, who wrote a life of another neoplatonist in which she has some interesting stuff, really more about the culture of Alexandria, where she grew up.

And we've got the amazingly horrible John of Nickyew, who is a 7th century coptic bishop, and he wrote a world history, mansplaining history for everybody, and his paragraph on Hypatia is very important because it reflects what people like him thought of her. And that is that she is a seductress, a high-class sex worker who beguards people with witchcraft. We've got a text that reflects what people were shouting in the street.

I solve one quadratic equation and all of a sudden I'm a witch. Yeah, yeah, yes. Right, before we get to Hypatia herself, let's talk about the world she was born into. We've previously done an episode, the previous series about the city of Alexandria in Egypt. For Olga's benefit, Edith, can you give us a quick rundown of life in late 4th century, Alexandria, this amazing city of learning?

It is a city which has had the very famous library and several other libraries and museums attached to it. It's a university city. It's still the greatest university in the whole of the Greco-Roman world. But it's multi-ethnic to an extraordinary degree and has had a history. of huge liberalism about that. But you've also, because of the particular point in history, in the 490s, the first really harsh edicts from the new Christian emperors were coming out.

391 is the edict of Theodosius that all pagan temples have to be shut down. So she comes into the world. She's born between 350 and 370, AD, CE, the exact point as she's reaching adulthood. where being an old pagan philosopher is beginning to become a very dangerous thing to be. But she's a pagan, which means she worships multiple gods. Yes, I don't think she did worship multiple gods

because she's actually a neo-Platonist pagan. So what happened to a lot... Come on, obviously. It's very important. You're embarrassing, that. I know, sorry. So while there's a sort of notional acceptance of the pagan pantheon, I don't think she had any kind of real faith or prayer life to gods

because she believes in this neoplatonist model of the universe, which is that all of the physical world that we can see around us, everything, our bodies, the environment, nature, anything made out of matter, is a second-rate copy of the eternal oneness of the world of ideas. Oh, my yoga teacher thinks the same. Right. A lot of people do. So let's talk about her childhood very briefly. You said she's born somewhere in the 350, 370s.

Olga, how do you think a young? woman like Hypatia got into maths in the ancient world? Well, she was a pagan, so I guess she started out by counting the gods. One to 12. What's your inkling? How do you think a young woman gets into math at that point in history? Oh my God, she lets a man explain it to her. Was it part of like a curriculum in school?

What she taught actually was part of her university curriculum. No, she's a Nipo baby. Of course. I mean, I wasn't going to say her dad, but we were all thinking it. And her dad is called Fet. which just means godly and he is kind of head of the maths department

at the library and museum he is the professor of maths in Alexandria no son is mentioned we know nothing about any other member of the family no mother is mentioned no sister is mentioned it's highly likely if he only had one kid and it was a girl there are several instances

of this in antiquity where men kind of politely forgot that there was no Y chromosome and actually trained up the daughter as an apprentice, something that's gone on throughout history. We actually know of four other women who were around in the fourth century, one actually in Alexandria. Four whole women. Four whole women.

That's a lot. We have confirmation of four women. There was a mathematician, a good one, called Pandrosion, which is a beautiful name. It actually means all moist like the morning dew. Then we've got one over at Pergamon, which is the other, at the second biggest library, which is on the west coast of Turkey. We've got somebody else in Athens, who's another neoplatonist. So she isn't alone.

But Hypatia is effectively treated as a son almost by her dad. I believe so. And he's called Theon. What does Hypatia mean? Well, Hypatia is such a weird. That's a sort of Victorian pronunciation. Yeah, I was going to say. Hupatia.

Oh. Hopatia. It means the very highest up, the summit. the pinnacle of excellence. Wow. Just the very topmost. No pressure. You know, the topmost.

It's just from the Greek word hoopsoos, which means elevation. That's amazing. I like that a lot. What does Olga mean? I don't want to talk about it. No, it's actually short for oligarch. To be clear, that's a joke. Okay.

So we have Pesha sort of taking on her dad's school job. He's the teacher. He's the math professor of the library of Alexandria. She takes the role on. What would be on the course that she's teaching? Well, there would be neoplatonist philosophy. Sure. So how do we think about the material world? How do we think about the one, the unity? That will have been introduced actually by a version of Aristotle's logic. It's kind of a synthesis, a bit of stoicism in there.

Because the way to achieve union with the one intellectually and psychologically and psychologically is actually by a mild form of asceticism. You've got to live quite a disson. life physically, you cannot do self-indulgence. It's got a monastic hint, but it's not actually in any way religious. It's all about the self-discipline. Then there will have been maths. There'll have been Euclidean maths.

There'll have been optics. And there have been astronomy. So basically all the fields in which you can apply maths. I mean, she sounds busy. She didn't have time to respond to fan mail clearly. They didn't do statistics because that's a Latin word. Oh, that's Roman. for you, isn't it? The Romans, they love data.

Exactly. No spreadsheets in Alexandria. Confirmed. Okay, so Hypatia or how did you pronounce it? Hopatia. That sounds slightly like your sort of, I don't know, it feels slightly like you're tripping over. It's almost like you're sort of falling down the staircase.

It's very pretty and green. It's beautiful. So Hypatia is mostly teaching men? Yes. Are there any women in a class? I very much doubt it. I cannot tell you that through fact, but usually that are sort of,

is saying that the museum, which is the big library where the teaching goes on, did not admit women. So she seems to be quite exceptional. And I'm sure that if she'd actually got married, she wouldn't have been allowed in. You know, I think it's this sort of, she's sort of a virgin who doesn't have anything to do with sex. So she's like a pagan high priestess. Oh, and she stays that way throughout her entire life. As far as we know, yeah. Oh, my God.

Wow. So she's a virgin and a matalete. Clese confirmed. Hush. Sorry, an athlete. Olga, how do you imagine the student-teacher relationship going if she's got a class of men who are expecting to learn from men and here's this woman teaching them?

Honestly, guys, I don't know. I feel like, first of all, it would stink, okay? Let's just throw that there. A bunch of young boys in one room, unventilated, that place stunk. I can tell you this much, all right? Also, deodorant hadn't been invented from what I can gather. Yes, links North Africa, yeah. Yeah, so I think it would be a lot of disciplining.

And I bet they would all keep falling for her. She would be the only woman in the university. So they'd be like, I guess you're the one. There's no other chicks. Ding, ding, ding. I think it's true. Well, there is a story which I'm absolutely sure is apocryful, but that one student who was so loved lawn that he kept harassing her to try to get her to go out with him.

And it said that she threw a soaking sanitary pad at him. Queen! And said, that's what you're in love with. like my physical body. Oh my God, I love that. What you should be after is the true love of one ideal form of beauty, not this material copy. She probably would have proved her point better if he didn't absolutely love getting a pad thrown at him.

I can guarantee you that. So she's got a student who's in love with her. She chucks a sanitary towel at his head. HR surely had words there because you can't do that. But that's an interesting sort of comeback. I bet all the other boys were like, can I have one? I'm telling you. A history of the United States in 100 objects is a brand new podcast from 99% Invisible in BBC studios.

Each week, we're looking at a different object from across American history with a unique story to tell about who we've been, what we've built, and what we've allowed ourselves to forget. Some of these objects are well known. Many are not, but all of them carry the story of how we got to this moment. Find a history of the United States and 100 objects on the 99% of visible feed. you get your podcasts. She's got her fans and her students sort of seem to really admire her. They do. What does she contribute to mathematics?

You know, her father had been the great teacher at the school. Does she add new knowledge? Is she as great a mathematician as perhaps Hollywood would like her to be? Probably not that original. She was an expert expounder of complicated mathematical ideas. She wrote big commentary books. This was the great age of commentaries. on Euclid's elements, on a guy called Diophantus

who wrote the treatise on arithmetic that everybody did, probably on Ptolemy's Almagest, almost certainly on Archimedes, who was one of the greatest, you know, mechanical engineers. Okay, sounds like she was a replied girl. Yeah, but her own contribution seems to have been of development, again of somebody else, a guy called Apollonius had written a book on conic sections.

Oh, my favourite. she does seem to have advanced how you measure cones or how cones exist something to do with cutting through the curving surface that goes around to measure it by doing some sort of intersection it's not completely clear

I have tried this with an ice cream cone myself well sometimes it's important that it's the developments in these commentaries actually make the original work more relevant like nobody really cared who Shakespeare was and then 10 things I hate about you came out. And then people sort of started getting it. So I don't think we should have underestimated her contribution.

No, she was genuinely held to have said something completely original about Cones. And she was also set to just be a really charismatic, brilliant communicator of this stuff. Yeah, so she's an amazing teacher. Yes. You know, her students love her. And that is an enormous gift to be able to express very complicated ideas in very simple ways. Hypatia is quite well renowned, so much so that several things have been named after her. There's a Hypatia asteroid belt, there's a Hypatia butterfly, there's a Hypatia crater on the moon.

So she's getting her retrospective acclaim now. Oh, yes. You know, we are now happy to acknowledge Hypatia is one of the big brains of the ancient world. Well, she's the first woman in STEM. Well, there you go. What was the criticism? What is it that they hated about her writing or her conduct? The Roman Empire is trying to go Christian.

And people who taught pagan philosophy, so things like Neoplatonism, which told you to question everything and do scientific explanations for things. So you were going to explain comets as something to do with something that's going on mechanically in the universe, not as a sign from God. This represents an incredible obstacle to converting the population to proper Christianity. So she became a figurehead for like the resistance to the newly converted emperors. Oh my God.

So in a way, her neo-pagan views were more progressive than the Christian one. Farsely. So Hypatia is obviously around in the kind of mid to late 300. And Christianity had been arriving in the Roman Empire earlier than that. And it'd taken sort of 60, 70, 70, 80 years to sort of become the official religion and a bit of a pushback. And then, you know, but here we are in Alexandria in Egypt. And we've got damage to pagan temples. We've got real physical changes, we've got tensions,

and we get the arrival of a new person called Cyril, but before Cyril, there's someone else important, we should mention. Yes, so between 391, when the Sorrapan was destroyed, and the Nicene Creed was officially set up as what you helped to believe in if you were a Christian, one of the reasons I think that Hypatia was able to survive and carry on teaching for at least another 20 years was that the patriarch, that means the bishop, Christian bishop of Alexandria was a guy who was quite sympathetic to her

and open-minded called Theophilus. So for 20 years she was under the protection of that bishop and he wasn't going to let all the fanatics closed down. So he's a Christian but he's quite open-minded and he's tolerant of her science. And there were plenty of those.

What happened in 4-12 is that a very different character got to be the bishop after Theophilus died and he is called Cyril. He only gets into that position by beating up another guy called Timotheus. You know, there's a huge amount of rioting.

As is the Christian way. Yeah. But Alexandria had actually for several hundred years been known as the riot city. I mean, they do like rioting in Alexandria. So it's almost any excuse for a riot. So there were lots of fights and riots and bloodshed before Cyril even got in.

So I think he's already slightly paranoid. Okay. Before he even gets in. He wants to secure his power base. Things then heat up even further because a new governor appointed by the Roman Empire, who's a secular governor. Yeah. Comes in.

Who's actually a Greek. All these people are Greek, even though they're in the Roman Empire, but called Orestes, as in the Greek mythical figure. Yeah. He just happens to be called Orestes. And that is, it's the face off between Cyril and Orestes that poor Hypatian. is caught. Both of these guys were ruthless. She gets caught in the crossfire.

And we start to get violence in the city and we get Cyril and Arrestes, you know, they're starting to be on opposite sides of mob violence, right? And some of this mob violence targets Jews, some of it targets Christians, some of it target pagan, you know, everyone's getting hurt. So we're thinking, is it modern terms? It's like of the mayor of Rome and the Pope

had moms? Yes. Yeah. Okay. It's almost, yeah, it's, I guess, governor of Egypt is a sort of bigger job, I suppose. It's kind of he's ruling a big old chunk of land. But yeah, but the bishop of, yeah, it's... And the Christians were very, very, very anxious to... Sorry, mayor of Los Angeles and Tom Cruise.

A much better analogy, yeah. Yes. Both Arrestes and Cyril wanted to be the top guy. Right. Okay. In Alexandria. And Cyril basically won. Cyril starts bringing in various different groups of thugs, really. One is his Neutron monk. then he gets the para Bolani, the people who risk their lives, they're really weird because we'll start off as a group of Christian paramedics.

Incredible. They are paramedics who are supposed to do things like take old people into old people's home and take people back from hospitals and protect. But they also serve, sort of under Cyril, but they also serve as his private bodyguard, his bouncers, his kind of mafia. his kind of mafioso thugs

Those two jobs do not normally go together It's weird Well people don't know but the entirety of the KGB is trained in first aid And how not to give it The exact process we don't understand By which the enmity against Arrestes not transferred to Hypatia

Oh Where does she even come into this? For five minutes you've been talking We haven't mentioned her one I'm sorry But no but no it's a good point like where is she in all this? Wait, so the parable line

have something to do with this? Orestes really likes it. He likes neoplatonic philosophy. The kind of Alexandria and his vision is precisely the one where she is going to be this dominant intellectual force and help keep everything open and progressive and the old Alexandria of intellectual culture is not replaced by a fanatical, primitive Christian, theocracy.

Yeah. I mean, that is what we're talking. Huge issue. But the hate people said she had, this is what, where my Coptic bishop from later on comes in useful, they said she had beguiled him sexually and entranceded the governor of the empire with her witchcraft. Which is literally her doing two plus two.

He costs four and he's going, whewa! The hatred for her was so much that it did lead to her being assaulted by the Parabolani. Oh, man. So the kind of the paramedics turn into paramilitary? Yeah. Blimey. Different explanations have been offered for exactly how the government got so, the secular government under arrestees got so associated with her.

But it was. So they're executing and punishing and torturing their enemies. Yes. Both of them. Yeah. Okay. And so. So did the Parabalani kill Hypatia?

Yes. They either arrested her while she was actually teaching or pulled her out of her chariot or vehicle as she was driving to or from. her teaching post and took her to into a church which had been a temple, I think of Zeus, and had been converted into the cathedral and killed her. She's caught up in this violence list in no way her fault. She's not incited it. She hasn't joined aside. She's just been teaching in her.

We have no evidence for that whatsoever that she was, had any political interest. She obviously wanted the multi-ethnic and open society. but it was the ire, the rage that Arrestes seems to have managed to get aroused in Cyril and the Christians. Arrestes then disappears off the... Yeah, I was going to say, what happened to the end? Well, there is no more word of him. He stops being governor. Somebody else comes in as governor, and maybe people said that he had screwed up.

Sure. Maybe he was actually genuinely upset and taught this is no way to... We don't know very much about him's guy. The one we know most about is Cyril, who went on to be one of the most successful bishops and early Christians of all time, was involved in all the most famous theological disputes and was even made a saint. Yes. Oh, come on. Wait, so this was the beginning of the end, right?

So, like, from this moment on, it became more and more conservatively Christian, right? Yeah. Oh, boy. So Cyril becomes a saint. And then you said that Hypatian becomes a sort of martyr to philosophy later. I think she's a secular saint. Yeah. She becomes a very important representative for both women in science and free thinking.

That's amazing. What a life. I mean, Olga, do you think Hypatia deserves her role as, you know, the first woman in STEM? Are you happy with that title? Yes, absolutely. Good. That was just so deeply, deeply sad. I don't have anything. No, I know.

But we do know about us. So we do get to celebrate her. And that's, you know, it's worth discussing her. And thank you for that. And, yeah, it's a very sad end. But extraordinary life, I think. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window.

This is where Olga and I sit silently doing our geometry homework while Professor Edith stands at the front of the class and tell us something we need to know about Hypatia. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes, take it away, Professor Edith. There's something else other than craters on the moon that have been named after Hypatia. And this is the Hypatia stone.

The Hypatia stone was discovered in 1996 by an Egyptian geologist. He discovered it in what are called the Libyan glass parts of the Sahara. Now, Libyan glass is some sort of strange meteorite type, sort of mineral that looks like glass. He was researching that, and he came across a small, very, very rough, craggy-looking stone, only about 1.3 inches in diameter,

tiny little sparkly diamonds in it. and it has been tested now, it's been sent by people in Los Angeles universities and in South Africa, Johannesburg. This stone's mineral makeup is so extraordinary that it means it's almost certainly made, formed before our solar system. It is quite extraordinary. Now, he wanted it, the geologists who found it, wanted it called after Hypatia, which is very sweet because as an Egyptian, scientist. He saw himself as a descendant. He didn't name it an Arabic name. He named it. It's the tradition of the Library of Alexandria. But just imagine this tiny stone and I've seen lots of different pictures of it. Unfortunately, the scientists have cut it into bits so it's even

smaller to examine it. This means that it's more than 4.6 billion years old. It was formed at 198 minus 198 degrees centigrade or colder in a super. Nova. That's amazing. Beautiful. She's timeless. I feel that. High page of the eternal idea, the eternal continent in the solar system. I mean, pretty good to be 4.2 billion. 4.6

billion. I think she'd like it too because she liked stars and stuff. If I have one takeaways, then she likes all that stuff. But it's kind of union with the one. Yeah. It came from out of space. It came before our galaxy. Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much,

Edith. Listener, if you're in the mood for more, ancient philosophers with Edith. Check out our episodes on Aristotle and Pythagoras. He's more than just a triangle guy. It's quite the life. And to hear more from Olga, of course, you can listen to our episodes on Ivan the Terrible. He was terrible, by the way. He really was. That's confirmed. Terrible confirmed. Or the episode on Vital Electricity, which is an absolute hoot. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, I just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the excellent Professor Edith Hall from University of Durham. Thank you, Edith. Thank you. I had a riot. Very fitting. And in Comedy Corner, we had the outstanding Olga Koch. Thank you, very, very much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we solve another forgotten historical equation.

But for now, I'm off to go and beg Rachel Weiss to play me in a movie. Bye! That would be good. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. Birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like evil genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, evil animals. Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room.

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It raised a question. What do the objects we choose to remember reveal about? who we really are. This is the Century Safe on a history of the United States and 100 objects. Find it in the 99% of visible feed wherever you get your podcasts.