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Birthday · January 13, 2002

Hypatia of Alexandria

January 13, 2002

The elements that make you — the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs — were scattered across space by dying stars long before...

Hypatia of Alexandria

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APOD published January 13, 2002. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

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Hypatia of Alexandria

Original APOD · January 13, 2002

Sixteen hundred years ago, Hypatia became one of the world's leading scholars in mathematics and astronomy. Hypatia's legendary knowledge, modesty, and public speaking ability flourished during the era of the Great Library of Alexandria. Hypatia is credited with contributions to geometry and astrometry, and she is thought instrumental in the development of the sky-measuring astrolabe. "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all," Hypatia is credited with saying. "To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing."

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