Hypatia of Alexandria · Mathematics

Editing Ptolemy: Saving the Sky

Hypatia&rsquo;s hand in the greatest astronomical work of antiquity - Ptolemy&rsquo;s <em>Almagest</em> and the Handy Tables - and what a &lsquo;commentary&rsquo; or &lsquo;critical edition&rsquo; truly meant: preserving, correcting, and making teachable the mathematics by which the ancient world read the heavens.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Ptolemy&rsquo;s Almagest was the master-text of ancient astronomy, that Hypatia (with her father Theon) prepared editions of it and of the astronomical tables, and that ancient &lsquo;editing&rsquo; meant correcting the text, re-verifying calculations, and improving methods like long division. Explain…

Leads to Claudius Ptolemy.

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