Hypatia of Alexandria was born circa 370-375 AD and her father was an astronomer named Theon. It is known that she was a well-renowned teacher and scholar by 390. She taught mathematics and astronomy which she applied to metaphysics and neo-Platonic philosophy.

            There are accounts of Hypatia countering a male student’s sexual harassment by throwing an equivalent of a fifth century used sanitary napkin at him. Though this account is apocryphal, it nonetheless gives a good insight to the personality of the woman who was a well-known teacher and lecturer during a horrendously misogynistic time.

            Much of what is known of Hypatia comes from her student Synesuis of Cyrene. After studying with Hypatia he converted to Christianity and became Bishop of Ptolemais. His letters to Hypatia survived and were translated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

            In 415 she was brutally murdered, allegedly by a group of monks, and her Suidas (a group of authors who composed the Lexicon) said that her body was hacked into pieces and burned.

            What happened to her seems to have happened to her works. Scholars have been analyzing scattered bits of mathematical and astronomical writings from the place and time that she lived which have been tentatively identified as hers. 1