Elaine Pagels

American writer and biblical scholar, author of books on the Gnostic gospels and Satan, "The Gnostic Gospels," 1973.

The daughter of a biologist, she went to Stanford and Harvard to become a Professor of Religion at Barnard in 1970. One of a team of scholars assembled to study the great find of 1945, 52 scrolls written by the Gnostics, she wrote a popular account of the somewhat obscure language to make the information more accessible to a general audience. The critical reviews of her work were mixed. In 1978 the formal translation was published.

Hiesey married theoretical physicist Heinz R. Pagels on 7 June 1969, with whom she had a son and adopted two children. In April 1987, their son Mark died at age six and a half, followed 15 months later by the death of her husband in a climbing accident.

Pagels married law professor Kent Greenawalt from Columbia University in June 1995. Each had been widowed about six years earlier, left with children. She had a son and a daughter, while Greenawalt had three sons.