Hypatia of Alexandria “”The great era of Greek mathematical
science, which began with the birth of a man, finished with the
death of a woman. Hypatia of Alexandria (died A.D. 415) was a
mathematician, inventor, and neo-Platonist philosopher of the
late 4th and early 5th centuries. The first known female
mathematician, she was skinned to death with tiles by a
Christian mob in the midst of a dispute between the Roman
governor Orestes and the Christian Patriarch Cyril (who was
later known as a Church Father, St. Cyril of Alexandria). At the
time of her death she was a lonely remnant of a philosophical
school that had been heavily persecuted for over 25 years; her
death is listed among the events that ended antiquity and began
the Dark Ages. Her father, Theon, was also a mathematician and
philosopher, associated with the Musæum (a pagan temple-cum-
philosophical school), and assisted her a good deal in getting
her started in her work. She was best known as a teacher,
eventually becoming the head of the Alexandrian