Re: [HM] Hypatia's birth date?
Ivo Schneider (Ivo.Schneider@UniBw-Muenchen.de)
Tue, 6 Jul 1999 11:16:59 +0200
An indirect answer to your student is: it is nearly impossible to assign
dates to mathematicians from Greek antiquity. Some fifty years ago guesses
about Heron's time oscillated in an intervall of abour 400 years. Only
after the dating of an eclipse Heron described as observed by himself this
could be changed. The only date we have for shure amongst the three most
prominent Greek mathematicians, Apollonios, Archimedes, and Euclid, is
Archimedes' death in 212 B.C. and the fact that he was an old man when he
died - a fact that was interpreted about 1500 years after his death by
Byzantinian historiographs as Archimedes died with age 75.
We do not even know if Euclid lived before of after Archimedes and we have
only very vague ideas indicating that Apollonios lived a generation later
than Archimedes.
Ivo