You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Hypatia - Female Scientists Who Aren't Marie Curie

in #steemstem6 years ago

Excellent @tfcoates, as always good work, really an admirable life of Hypatia with tragic outcome, it occurs to me to ask, if in her time or before, were there other women scientists ?, whose work was lost in history, because of prejudice and ignorance. If Hypatia was accepted, I suppose that as equal in the scientific circles of her time, how many others could also be part of them? and maybe we never know. On the other hand, it is curious as a doctrine that was supposed to be initiated by someone who professed equality and love of neighbor, could degenerate into a genocidal and fanatical cult.

Sort:  

Hi @amart29!

That's a really good question. So according to the research I did when I was looking into this article Hypatia was probably the most renown female scientist of her era. This doesn't mean there weren't other women who were respected for their scientific minds, but none reached the notoriety of Hypatia.

But as always I think it's important to consider women from other cultures who're often overlooked because they're not part of our Western history. There are records of an ancient Egyptian woman who was considered the 'chief physician' of the time (Merit-Ptah)... though perhaps more a healer and less a scientist. Right after Hypatia we have Theano a student of Pythagoras.

The other branch of 'science' I found information on was alchemy. There are a number of women who contributed to this field, though they may have been considered scientists at the time their contributions do not live on and the field is not relvent today (unlike Hypatias) so I'm giving her the gold medal :)

Very good information, I did not know the scientists you mention, you are very well documented.