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 …
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was an English physician and feminist, she was the first female doctor to qualify in England. She opened a school of medicine for women, and paved the way for women’s medical education in Britain. Anderson was born in 1836 in Whitechapel, London to Newson and Louisa Dunnell Garrett. Her father had previously …
Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She wrote and illustrated more than 20 children’s books featuring the animals Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Benjamin Bunny. Potter was born in 1866 in London. Her father Rupert had trained as a lawyer but devoted himself to art and photography, her mother Helen …
Katherine G. Johnson is an American physicist, space scientist, and mathematician who contributed to America’s aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA. Johnson was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She showed an interest in mathematics from a young age, and was eager to go …
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. El Saadawi was born in 1931 in the small village of Kafr Tahla. Her family were a mix of traditional and progressive. At the age of six El Saadawi was pinned down by four women in her home in Egypt and was subjected …
Hedy Lamarr was an inventor, pin-up and film actress. She co-developed an early technique for spread spectrum communications which are key in many wireless communications used today, including Wi-Fi. Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria. In the late 1920’s, her acting talents were discovered by producer Max Reinhardt. He …
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, women’s rights activist and writer. Mead was born in 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Edward Sherwood Mead, a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Emily Mead, a feminist political activist and sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Mead’s family moved frequently and …
Florence B. Seibert was an American biochemist best known for her contributions to the tuberculin test and to safety measures for intravenous drug therapy. She is a member of the U.S. National Women’s Hall of Fame. Seibert was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. As the age of three she contracted polio which left her with a …
Ada Lovelace was a British Analyst, Metaphysician, and Founder of Scientific Computing. Lovelace was born Ada Gordon in 1815. Her father, George Gordon, Lord Byron and her mother Annabella Milbanke separated when she was a month old. A few months later, Lord Byron left England and never saw Ada again. Lovelace’s mother raised her under …
Tu Youyou is a Chinese medical scientist, pharmaceutical chemist, and educator. She has received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She is the first Chinese woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize in the sciences. Tu was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China in 1930. …