Hypatia

About Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350–415 CE) was a preeminent mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in the late Roman Empire, representing the peak of the Neoplatonist school in Alexandria. Her influence stems from her scholarly work, including commentaries on significant mathematical texts like Diophantus's *Arithmetica* and Apollonius's *Conics*, solidifying her legacy as one of the first mathematically documented female scholars. MIT's Pantheon project recognizes this foundational importance with a Historical Popularity Index (HPI) rank of #436 among thousands of influential figures.

In the modern digital landscape of 2025, Hypatia garners 618K annualized Wikipedia pageviews, placing her Attention Gap at approximately 1x relative to her historical importance. This suggests a relatively stable level of online recognition, particularly given her ancient context. To provide contrast, she receives significantly fewer views than contemporaries in our comparison pool, such as Mary Magdalene (HPI #580, 1.9M views), who has over three times her traffic despite a lower historical ranking, highlighting a differential attention paid to ancient figures.

While her overall attention is stable with a +4.7% year-over-year increase, the quarterly momentum shows a -23% drop from Q1 to Q3 in 2025, indicating that while her presence persists, current internet curiosity is trending downward.