Hypatia

Born around 350-370 in Alexandria, Hypatia became the first female mathematician whose life was well documented, teaching Neoplatonist philosophy and astronomy to pagans and Christians alike, including the future bishop Synesius. She wrote commentaries on Diophantus's Arithmetica and Apollonius's work on conic sections, likely edited Ptolemy's Almagest, and constructed astrolabes and hydrometers. Widely beloved and politically influential, she advised Orestes, the Roman prefect, during his feud with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. In March 415, rumors that she blocked reconciliation between the two men led a mob of Christians, led by a lector named Peter, to kill her. The murder made her a martyr for philosophy among Neoplatonists, a Christian saint in the Middle Ages, an Enlightenment symbol against Catholicism, a romanticized "last of the Hellenes" in Victorian literature, and eventually a feminist icon - each age needing her death to mean something different.