Hypatia is remembered now, primarily as a great mathematician. In the recent (rather good) film, Agora, she is represented as such, and the fact she outshone her famous father Theon, is also accurately represented.

In the 4th Century CE, she was the head of the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria (having been trained herself, in Athens) and so the philosophical inheritor of the great philosopher Plotinus. She understood, in a way few mathematicians now do, that the work of the mathematician Euclid had profound spiritual aspects as well as those of geometry. Euclid had also developed his Geometric theorems in Alexandria.

Born in Switzerland in 1493, Paracelsus became fascinated by medicine by the age of 16 and gained a doctorate degree in that subject. He learnt much of his practical medicine by working as a military surgeon in the service of the Venetians. He travelled widely. He had a license to practice as a physician in Basel and this gave him the opportunity to lecture at the University. Unlike most of his contemporaries he did not lecture in Latin but in German. He wished what he taught to be understood by everyone.

Known as Bombastus he lived up to the name, picking fights with many of the medical experts of the day whose ignorance he found highly irritating. He even went so far as to burn the books of Avicenna and Galen, in order to make the point that practice was much more important than theory.