Pandrosion of Alexandria () was a mathematician in fourth-century-AD

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

, discussed in the ''Mathematical Collection'' of

Pappus of Alexandria Pappus of Alexandria (; grc-gre, Πάππος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; AD) was one of the last great Greek mathematicians of antiquity known for his ''Synagoge'' (Συναγωγή) or ''Collection'' (), and for Pappus's hexagon theorem i ...

and known for developing an approximate method for

doubling the cube Doubling the cube, also known as the Delian problem, is an ancient geometric problem. Given the edge of a cube, the problem requires the construction of the edge of a second cube whose volume is double that of the first. As with the related pro ...

. Although there is disagreement on the subject, Pandrosion is believed by many current scholars to have been female. If so, she would be an earlier female contributor to mathematics than

Hypatia Hypatia, Koine pronunciation (born 350–370; died 415 AD) was a neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker in Alexandria wher ...

Contributions

Pandrosion is credited with developing a method for calculating numerically accurate but approximate solutions to the problem of

, or more generally of calculating

cube root In mathematics, a cube root of a number is a number such that . All nonzero real numbers, have exactly one real cube root and a pair of complex conjugate cube roots, and all nonzero complex numbers have three distinct complex cube roots. Fo ...

s. It is a "recursive geometric" solution, but three-dimensional rather than working within the plane. Pappus criticized this work as lacking a proper

mathematical proof A mathematical proof is an inferential argument for a mathematical statement, showing that the stated assumptions logically guarantee the conclusion. The argument may use other previously established statements, such as theorems; but every proo ...

. Although Pappus does not directly state that the method is Pandrosion's, he includes it in a section of his ''Collection'' dedicated to correcting what he perceives as errors in Pandrosion's students. Another method included in the same section, and attributable in the same way indirectly to Pandrosion, is a correct and exact method for constructing the

geometric mean In mathematics, the geometric mean is a mean or average which indicates a central tendency of a set of numbers by using the product of their values (as opposed to the arithmetic mean which uses their sum). The geometric mean is defined as the ...

, simpler than the method used by Pappus.

Gender

When

Friedrich Hultsch Friedrich Otto Hultsch (22 July 1833, Dresden – 6 April 1906, Dresden) was a German classical philologist and historian of mathematics in antiquity. Biography After graduating from the Dresden ''Kreuzschule'', Friedrich Hultsch studied classica ...

prepared his 1878 translation of Pappus's ''Collection'' from Greek into Latin, the manuscript of the ''Collection'' that he used referred to Pandrosion using a feminine form of address. Hultsch decided that this must have been a mistake, and referred to Pandrosion as masculine in his translation; many later scholars have followed suit. However, the 1988 English translation of Pappus by Alexander Raymond Jones "argued convincingly" that the original feminine form was not a mistake, and more recent scholarship has followed Jones in taking the position that Pandrosion was a woman.

Connection to Hypatia

has often been called the first woman to have contributed to mathematics, but Pappus died before the earliest suggested birth date of Hypatia. Therefore, Pandrosion is a likely candidate for an earlier female contributor to mathematics than Hypatia. Pandrosion was also described by Pappus as a teacher of mathematics, and although Pappus recorded only men among her students, Edward J. Watts suggests that Hypatia may have known of, or even known, Pandrosion.

References

{{Authority control 4th-century Byzantine scientists 4th-century mathematicians Ancient Greek mathematicians Women mathematicians 4th-century Byzantine women 4th-century Egyptian women Ancient women scientists 4th-century BC mathematicians