In the city of Alexandria in 415 CE, the bishop and the governor  were in a fight. It started with a disagreement over the  behavior of a militia of monks, and ended with an accusation  of witchcraft leveled against one of the most  powerful figures in the city. Hypatia of Alexandria was a prominent  mathematician, philosopher, and advisor to the city’s leaders. In the centuries since she lived, the details of her life have been  the subject of much dispute and have taken on an almost  mythical status. But while none of Hypatia’s  own writings survive, her contemporaries’ and students’  accounts of her work and life paint a picture of the qualities that  made her renowned as a scholar, beloved as a teacher, and ultimately  led to her downfall. Hypatia was born around  355 in Alexandria, then part of the Egyptian province  of the Eastern Roman Empire, and an intellectual center. Her father Theon was an accomplished  Greek mathematician and astronomer; her mother is unknown. Hypatia was likely an only child, and  Theon educated her himself. By adulthood, she had surpassed her  father in both mathematics and philosophy, becoming the city’s foremost scholar  and taking over his position at the head of the Platonic school,  similar to a modern university. She refined scientific instruments,  wrote math textbooks, and developed a more efficient  method of long division. But perhaps her most significant  contributions to intellectual life in Alexandria came through her teaching. The philosophy Hypatia taught drew  from the legacy of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the mystical philosopher  Plotinus and the mathematician Pythagoras. The convergence of these influences merged to form a school called Neoplatonism. For the Neoplatonists, mathematics  had a spiritual aspect, divided among the four branches of  arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These subjects were not studied merely  for the sake of curiosity or practical utility, but because they  authenticated the belief that numbers were the sacred  language of the universe. In the repeated patterns of algebraic  formulas and geometric shapes, the orbits of the planets, and the  harmonious intervals of musical tones, the Neoplatonists saw a rational  cosmic force at work. Students delved into this ordered  mathematical world to achieve higher unity with this force,  known as “the One.” While Hypatia was considered pagan— a term for traditional Roman  belief before Christianity— she worshipped no particular  deity or deities, and her ideas could be applied alongside  multiple religious viewpoints. Jewish and Christian as well  as pagan students travelled from the farthest reaches of  the empire to study with her. The nonpartisan environment  Hypatia fostered, where all students could feel comfortable, was especially remarkable given the  religious and political turmoil that was fracturing the city of  Alexandria at the time. Christianity had recently become  the Empire’s state religion. The local archbishop Cyril had steadily  gained political power, commanding zealous militias of Christian  monks to destroy pagan temples and harass the Jewish population. In doing so, he encroached on the secular authority of the Roman governor Orestes, himself a moderate Christian, leading to a bitter public feud between the two men. Because she was seen as a wise  and impartial figure, governor Orestes consulted Hypatia, who advised him to act with  fairness and restraint. But when a group of Cyril’s  monks incited a riot, badly injuring Orestes in the process,  he had their leader tortured to death. Cyril and his followers blamed Hypatia, accusing her of witchcraft to  turn Orestes against Christianity. In March 415, as Hypatia was  traveling through the city, the bishop’s militia of monks  dragged her from her carriage and brutally murdered and dismembered her. Hypatia’s death was a turning point  in the politics of Alexandria. In the wake of her murder, other philosophers in the Greek  and Roman tradition fled, and the city’s role as a center of  learning declined. In a very real way, the spirit of inquisition, openness,  and fairness she fostered died with her.