Edith Stein

(German philosopher, Carmelite nun, martyr, and saint of the Catholic Church, 1891–1942). Stein studied under two of the great minds of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler. In 1922 she converted to Christianity, eventually becoming a Carmelite nun. This failed to shield her from Nazi persecution, however, and she died in Auschwitz in 1942. She was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by Pope John Paul II (who, interestingly, wrote his doctoral thesis on the phenomenological work of Max Scheler). Perhaps her major philosophical work is Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt to an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, which attempts a synthesis of phenomenology and the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas.