Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria (born around 350-370, died March 415) was a Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician who stands as one of antiquity's most prominent named teachers. She led the Mouseion, the philosophical school her father Theon of Alexandria had headed before her, lecturing on the works of Plato and Aristotle and drawing students from across the Mediterranean; her teaching was built on public, in-person instruction rather than written treatises, and she reportedly walked through Alexandria in a philosopher's cloak giving impromptu public lectures to any who would listen. Her most documented student, Synesius of Cyrene, later became a bishop and kept up a lifelong correspondence with her that preserves much of what is known about her teaching and mentorship. As a woman leading a major school of philosophy in the late Roman world, and as a teacher whose murder by a religious mob in 415 made her a lasting symbol of both scholarship and its vulnerability, Hypatia occupies a distinctive place in the history of education as an institution led and shaped by a woman.