I recently watched the 2009 film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, a Greek philosopher who lived in Roman Egypt during the 4th and 5th centuries. She was the first historically noted female mathematician and was head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy, something extraordinary for a woman of her times. The film depicts two major events in her life; the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 391, and later, the political events leading up to her death in 415. The destruction of the library is one of the great “what-ifs” of history. It wasn’t the first time that it had [...]