第一个女数学家The first woman mathematician

90° The first woman mathematician. Among the minor writers and commentators who succeeded Pappus at the Alexandrian Museum were Theon and his daughter Hypatia. These two lived during the turbulent years of religious upheaval at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, and they were the last scholars of mathematics at the famous institution. Theon was the author of a commentary on Ptolemy's Almagest and a revision of Euclid's Elements from which all our modern editions have derived. His daughter, Hypatia, who undoubtedly obtained an interest in mathematics from her father, is the first woman mathematician to be mentioned in the history of mathematics. She was distinguished in mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, and is reported to have written commentaries on Diophantus's Arithmetica and Apollonius's Conic Sections.

As an exponent of Alexandrian Neoplatonism, Hypatia lectured on Platonic philosophy at the Museum. Her most notable student was Synesius of Cyrene, who later became bishop of Ptolemais. His affectionate and admiring letters to Hypatia illustrate the close and fruitful contact of early spiritual Christianity with pagan philosophy. On the other hand, the bitter and cruel contact of early militant Christianity with pagan philosophy is illustrated by Hypatia's death, for in March, 415, she was seized by a mob of infuriated Christians and barbarously murdered on the steps of a pagan temple.

With the tragic passing of Hypatia, the curtain fell on the Greek contribution to mathematics; the long and glorious history of Greek mathematics essentially came to an end.