Dr Helen Sharman OBE FRSC, is a British chemist who became the first Briton in space and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991. Sharman was born in 1963 in Grenoside, Sheffield. Her father, a physicist, inspired an early interest in science and made her realise how relevant science is to …
Margaret Hamilton is a computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She is best known for her role as an Award-winning American NASA scientist and mathematician who, as the Director of the Software Engineering Division at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (CSDL), worked to develop the Apollo program. Hamilton was born in 1936 in Paoli, Indiana. …
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author. She is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature and was closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. At the age of three, her family moved to Eatonville Florida, one of the first incorporated black …
Fatema Mernissi was a Moroccan sociologist and one of the founders of Islamic feminism. She is best known for her focus on reconciling traditional Islam with progressive feminism. Mernissi was born in 1940 in Fes, Morocco. As a child, she, unlike her mother and grandmother before her, was able to gain an education. She attended …
Ava DuVernay is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. She is best known for ‘Selma’, which chronicles Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in the struggle for voting rights. She is the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at Sundance, the first female director to receive a Golden Globe …
Frances Power Cobbe was an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading women’s suffrage campaigner. Cobb was born in 1822 in Newbridge House on her family estate in what is now Donabate, Co. Dublin. The Cobbe family included noteworthy figures like Charles Cobbe, the Archbishop of Dublin from 1743 to 1765. Cobbe was the …
Gloria Richardson is best known as the the leader of the Cambridge Movement, a struggle for civil rights and economic opportunities in Cambridge, Maryland. Richardson was born in Gloria St. Clair Hayes in 1922 in Baltimore, Maryland. At the age of six, Richardson’s family moved to Cambridge, Maryland where her grandfather, Herbert M. St. Clair, …
Alison Bechdel is an acclaimed author and illustrator known for her graphic novel ‘Fun Home’, and the Bechdel test, an indicator of gender bias in film. Bechdel was born in 1960 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Helen and Bruce Bechdel who taught at the local high school. Her father also worked as a funeral director …
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She was a pioneer in educating women in medicine and a leading public health activist. Blackwell was born in 1821 in Bristol, England to Samuel and Hannah Blackwell. Her father was a dissenter, and so his children were denied public …
Caroline Norton was an English feminist, social reformer, and author of the early and mid-nineteenth century. She was a major Victorian campaigner for women’s rights and was instrumental in the passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857. Norton was born in 1808 in London. At the age of …