Who is the earliest known female mathematician?
Hypatia
Hypatia[lower-alpha 1] (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD)[1][5] was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy.[6] She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded.[7] Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor. She is known to have written a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus's original text, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, which has not survived. Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy's Almagest, based on the title of her father Theon's commentary on Book III of the Almagest.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1996: Joan Birman became the first woman to receive the Chauvenet Prize, which is awarded annually by the Mathematical Association of America to the author of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic by a member of the association.