WOMEN IN SCIENCE TO REMEMBER – Part 4 – Mary the Jewess

Mary the Jewess is known by different names: Maria, Maria the Prophetess, and Maria the Copt. She was the inventor of BAIN-MARIE, a technique still used in cooking.
We have no idea when she lived exactly; we only know her from a book of alchemists ( from Zosimos of Panopolis), written around 300. Historians think that Maria probably lived in Alexandria during the first and third century A.D.. She believed that metals had a body, a soul, a spirit and a gender. Combining two metals with different genders could make a new material (entity). Now, we would call this a chemical reaction.Zosimos described several of Mary’s experiments and instruments.
She probably was the teacher of Democritus, a Greek philosopher known for its atomic theory of the world.
Ibn-al Nadim, a bibliographic and biographer from Bagdad in the 10th Century, named Mary as one of the 52 most influential alchemists who was able to make the pigment cardinal purple.She is also known for an axiom: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth”. Please tell me in the comments if you understand what this means.

Mary is supposed to have invented (but it is being discussed) a tribikus ( a kind of alembic), a kerotakis (to head up fluid and collect vapours) and best of all, the Bain-marie (a double boiler). Nowadays, we still use this in cooking.

This is a series of posts about
impressive women who are role models. Historical giants in science, philosophy,
philanthropy, peace, education, medicine and whatever I am impressed by.
Source: Wikipedia.