Hypatia: A Story Beyond the Board
As you probably already know, Syde is an innovative SME engaged in Research & Development activities. From our recent projects, we decided to create something new: a fully integrated development board equipped with modules for battery management, solar panels, sensors, and devices, along with all the communication platforms needed in IoT.
To mark the beginning of this new journey, we wanted to involve our customers in what was, for us, a very important decision. We had only one goal: to find a name that wasn’t ordinary—a name with a story. So, by combining the features of our project with a highly relevant theme, we came to a conclusion: we would pay tribute to the women who impacted the course of human history—Women who made science their life’s mission, women who helped change the world, women known for their passion and courage, for their creativity and innovation.
But how could we make this even more exciting and challenging?
Simple: we let our customers decide. Through a public survey, they chose the names of our new product line.
And that’s how we arrived at: Hypatia, Hedy, Ada, and all the others yet to come.
But who are these remarkable women?
Hypatia
A mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and Neoplatonist teacher in Alexandria, Egypt, during a time of great religious and political tension. Hypatia is the first recorded female mathematician in history. She is remembered as a martyr of rational thought and intellectual freedom. Rediscovered during the Renaissance, today she symbolizes scientific knowledge, women’s empowerment, tolerance, and secularism.
Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler)
Born in Vienna, she quickly became a Hollywood star—but she was also an inventor and tech pioneer. Together with composer George Antheil, she developed an invention to prevent radio signal interception in torpedoes. They created a “frequency hopping” system—the precursor to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
Ada Lovelace (Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace)
From a young age, she showed extraordinary talent in mathematics and logic. In 1843, she translated an article by Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea on Babbage’s Analytical Engine. But she didn’t stop at translation—her detailed notes, longer than the article itself, included: An algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers, A vision of a machine that could manipulate symbols and even create music, anticipating modern computing. This is why Ada Lovelace is considered the first computer programmer in history.
