 Hypatia:
Mathematician, astronomer, and Platonic philosopher.
According to the Byzantine encyclopedia The Suda, her
father Theon was the last head of the Museum at Alexandria.
Hypatia's prominence was accentuated by the fact that she was both female
and pagan in an increasingly Christian environment. Shortly before her
death, Cyril was made the Christian bishop of Alexandria, and a conflict
arose between Cyril and the prefect Orestes. Orestes was disliked by
some Christians and was a friend of Hypatia, and rumors started that
Hypatia was to blame for the conflict. In the spring of 415 C.E., the
situation reached a tragic conclusion when a band of Christian (Coptic)
monks seized Hypatia on the street, beat her, and dragged her body to
a church where they mutilated her flesh with sharp tiles and burned her
remains.
 Her
works include:
A Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus
A Commentary on the Conics of Apollonious
She edited the third book of her father's Commentary on the Almagest
of Ptolemy
Form The Life of Hypatia, Socrates Scholasticus (Greek Christian
church historian, born at Constantinople c.380-450)
"THERE WAS a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter
of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature
and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own
time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she
explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many
of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On
account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she
had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she
not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates.
Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men.
For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue
admired her the more. Yet even she fell victim to the political
jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent
interviews with  Orestes,
it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that
it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the
bishop. Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and
bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid
her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they
took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely
stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.* After tearing
her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called
Cinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought not the least
opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian
church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of
Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions
of that sort. This happened in the month of March during Lent,
in the fourth year of Cyril's episcopate, under the tenth consulate
of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius."
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