Who they were
Hypatia was the daughter of the mathematician Theon of Alexandria. She headed a Neoplatonic school in the city, teaching philosophy and astronomy to elite students, pagan and Christian alike.
What they did
She is associated with commentaries on Ptolemy’s Almagest, Diophantus’s Arithmetica, and Apollonius’s Conics. Some of this work was done jointly with her father or preserved through his editions, and the attributions remain partly uncertain.
Legacy
In 415 she was murdered by a Christian mob amid the violent power struggle between the imperial prefect Orestes and Cyril, bishop of Alexandria — events recorded by the ancient historian Socrates Scholasticus and later accounts. Her death shocked contemporaries. Later ages made her a symbol — of the end of classical learning, of reason against fanaticism, and of women in science — readings that go beyond what the ancient evidence supports.