I think that was this way through all history:

* Main achitect of pyramid in Egypt was buried together in it(bad that I can't find link to that)

* Quite interesting story of Denis Papin (http://radian.org/notebook/boatmen-and-cyberlaw)

* Here is list in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_scientists (while not all of them were killed because of their work)