Pandrosion

Pandrosion is credited with developing a method for calculating numerically accurate but approximate solutions to the problem of doubling the cube, or more generally of calculating cube roots. It is a "recursive geometric" solution, but three-dimensional rather than working within the plane.[1] Pappus criticized this work as lacking a proper mathematical proof.[1][2][3] 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.[1][3] 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, simpler than the method used by Pappus.[1][4]

When Friedrich Hultsch 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.[2][5] However, the 1988 English translation of Pappus by Alexander Raymond Jones "argued convincingly" that the original feminine form was not a mistake,[1] and more recent scholarship has followed Jones in taking the position that Pandrosion was a woman.[3][6][7][8]

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.[2] 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.[4]