Hypatia (born c. 355 CE—died March 415, Alexandria) was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician and astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum. Hypatia continued his program, which was essentially a determined effort to preserve the Greek mathematical and astronomical heritage in (1) extremely difficult times. She is credited with commentaries on geometry, number theory, as well as an (2) astronomical table. These works, the only ones she is listed as having written, have been lost, although there have been attempts to (3) reconstruct aspects of them. She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for (4) whom such claim can be made.

She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans. Her philosophy also led her to embrace a life of dedicated virginity. The climate of tolerance lapsed, and shortly afterward Hypatia became the victim of a particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots.

The affair made Hypatia a powerful feminist symbol and a figure of affirmation for intellectual endeavor in the face of ignorant prejudice. Her intellectual accomplishments alone were quite ______ to merit the preservation and respect of her name, but, sadly, the manner of her death added to it an even greater emphasis.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica. Adapted.

Hypatia (born c. 355 CE—died March 415, Alexandria) was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician and astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum. Hypatia continued his program, which was essentially a determined effort to preserve the Greek mathematical and astronomical heritage in (1) extremely difficult times. She is credited with commentaries on geometry, number theory, as well as an (2) astronomical table. These works, the only ones she is listed as having written, have been lost, although there have been attempts to (3) reconstruct aspects of them. She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for (4) whom such claim can be made.

She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans. Her philosophy also led her to embrace a life of dedicated virginity. The climate of tolerance lapsed, and shortly afterward Hypatia became the victim of a particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots.

The affair made Hypatia a powerful feminist symbol and a figure of affirmation for intellectual endeavor in the face of ignorant prejudice. Her intellectual accomplishments alone were quite ______ to merit the preservation and respect of her name, but, sadly, the manner of her death added to it an even greater emphasis.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica. Adapted.

Kew Gardens

From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next; instead of rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest flowers; the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a whole market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun; and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul.

Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

(Source: Virginia Woolf — adaptation.)