Hypatia in Texas
Hypatia of Alexandria [c. 370–c. 415] was martyred by being torn to shreds by a Christian mob, partly because she did not adhere to strict Christian principles. She considered herself a neo-Platonist, a pagan, and a follower of Pythagorean ideas. Interestingly, Hypatia is the first woman mathematician in the history of humanity of whom we have reasonably secure and detailed knowledge. She was said to be physically attractive and determinedly celibate. When asked why she was obsessed with mathematics and would not marry, she replied that she was wedded to the truth.
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The Christians were her strongest philosophical rivals, and they officially discouraged her Platonic assertions about the nature of God and the afterlife. On a warm March day in A.D. 414, a crowd of Christian zealots seized her, stripped her, and proceeded to scrape her flesh from her bones using sharp shells. Next, they cut up her body and burned the pieces. Like some victims of religious terrorism today, she may have been seized merely because she was a famous person on the other side of the religious divide. it was not until after the Renaissance that another woman, Maria Agnesi, made her name as a famous mathematician.Hypatia's death triggered the departure of many scholars from Alexandria and, in many ways, marked the end of centuries of Greek progress in mathematics. During the European Dark Ages, Arabs and Hindus were the ones to play the leading roles in fostering the progress of mathematics.
[excerpt from Clifford A. Pickover, The Math Book, New York : Sterling, 2009; p. 78.]