Tell me about an amazing woman in history that I may not have heard about?

Oh look, seems like it's made a quiet but dignified move to Classics

Wow....feeling so inspired. I've never seen such a wide and varied list of amazing women. I am going to save this thread and use it to educate my daughter.

Mumsnet HQ: please move this so it lasts forever

Laura Secord

That's reminding me of the early C20th mathematician Emmy Noether, perfectstorm, who taught unpaid at the University of Göttingen because the faculty wouldn't appoint her to a proper position.

The various biographies seem to cast David Hilbert as her mentor and protector, but IIRC the story going round when I was at college was that he'd nicked some of her work to publish as his own.

Elfriede Scholz, and Ellen Wilkinson.

this thread is perfect for one of my new year plans.
I'm going to print it off and work my way through, one person per day and learn something new everyday.
Thank you all.

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin discovered what the universe was made of. Literally - it's mainly hydrogen. Unfortunately she was told not to publish at the time she proposed this, as it flew in the face of all current theory. The supervisor who told her not to do so later published the theory himself, and got most of the credit, though in fairness he credited her work himself in his own. In the 1920s this was simply ignored.

The actress Hedy Lamarr invented wi-fi. Back in the 1940s - we know that because she took out a patent on the idea, which is why a company wanting to utilise her suggestions paid her to do so as recently as 1998. Bluetooth is based on it. She wanted to support the war effort at the time; it wasn't meant to make her rich.

The atom wasn't only split by Hahn and two other chaps, despite their being the ones to snaffle the Nobel Prize. In fact letters written between him and his colleague, Lise Meitner, indicate the final leap was made by her.

The role of chromosomes in determining sex was established by Nettie Stevens in 1905. Unfortunately for her, the man who widely promoted this theory was also her boss and the writer of her obituary (she died of breast cancer in 1912), so when he said she was pretty much just a technician and obscured her role, he got all the credit.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, when a PhD candidate, observed the first pulsars. Her supervisor was initially pretty dismissive but once convinced, co-authored a paper with her along with 3 other astro-physicists. She was named second, her supervisor first... yet despite her key role and provision of the most significant data, she was not awarded the Nobel Prize for the work when her supervisor and another male colleague were.

Rosalind Franklin is not an outlier or even unusual - in her discoveries, or the overlooking of them. I remember these women when I hear people insist that there aren't any brilliant women scientists (or artists, or writers). It makes me wonder how many we just don't know about at all, and who can't be rediscovered once their paperwork is unearthed by feminist researchers, existed down the years, supporting the research done by their fathers, husbands and brothers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville

Mary Somerville, mathematician and astronomer in a time when women just... didn't. She just quietly and competently got on with it, and.... did.

Kate Edgar the first woman in the British empire to gain a BA. She did this by not mentioning, when she applied for university, that she was female.

Kate Sheppard was one of the driving forces behind NZ being the first country to grant women the vote.

Helen Clark at her defeat, was the longest serving elected female head of state in the western world.

Someone's already mentioned her but Beate Gordon who helped write the Japanese constitution after WW2, and ensured that women were granted more rights.

Helen Suzman was a South African parliamentarian and the only one to unequivocally vote against Apartheid for 13 years. She also helped campaign for prisoners rights (including helping Mandela get long trousers for black prisoners - not mentioned in the film BTW, but mentioned in Long Walk to Freedom). Highly instrumental (more than Bono) in bringing an end to Apartheid.

Christabel Bielenberg, writer, opposed Nazism in Germany during WW2 at great personal risk.

one of the first women's refuges in England

I was going to say Sophie Scholl - but how about Hannah Szenes?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hana_Senesh

Eudora Welty, writer

Martha Gellhorn, novelist, journalist and travel writer (survived being married to E Hemingway)

Eleanor Roosevelt, US First Lady with her own agenda

Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn, social reformer, suffragette, and helped introduce contraception to USA women. Mother of Katharine Hepburn actress

Maureen Dunlop de Popp, and all the other female pilots who flew Spitfires, Lancasters and Hurricanes during WW2

Erin Pizzey, novelist and set up one of the women's refuges

Maya Angelou, American author and poet.

Fascinating thread OP

Nancy Astor - first female in parliament to introduce a bill

Simone de Beauvoir - author of The Second Sex - prominent feminist.

Betty Friedan - political activist and campaigned with special references to women not being satisfied as housewives.

I've just discovered that Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was also the first woman mayor in En gland as well as a notable doctor. Amazing.

Maud Karpeles Folk song collector and historian - must have been brave to go to some of the places she did to collect songs and dances.
Jayaben Desai Jayaben Desai lead a strike at a photographic processing lab which was largely staffed by 1st generation Gujarati women. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful (after a long strike supported by miners and posties featuring violent scenes at the picket line), Desai showed that you couldn't pay Asian women below average market rates or withhold information from them just because of some racist stereotype of being submissive and unable to read and English well.

Tomyris queen of the nomadic steppe people, the Massagetae, who defeated Cyrus the Great.

Selina Cooper. Born in Cornwall in 1864 but moved to the north after the death of her father. Got involved in trade union activities whilst working in the textile factories and was an early objector to the harassment the mainly female workers were subjected to by the male workers. Became the first woman to represent the Independent Labour Party and campaigned for women's suffrage. Later she became a lead campaigner in the fight against fascism. A truly inspiring woman who stood up to the injustices that resulted from the male dominated world at the time.

Most of the women mentioned who were black women involved in civil rights were working-class and had plenty of domestic duties, as were the women of the trade union and labour movements.

Lucie Aubrac - she was in the French resistance and showed untold bravery to help her husband escape, also very much a feminist. Her book is short and well worth a read.

I came on to post Mary Kingsley, saw NigellasDealer had done so first, but am going to add a bit about her. Neice of Charles Kingsley (author of The Water Babies), didn't get to be educated formally like her brother but taught herself at home. Became the carer for both her parents and when they died, used her inheritance to explore Africa alone and wrote two best-selling books about her travels.

To add someone new, don't think Elizabeth Gaskell has been mentioned yet - not as famous as her friend Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote, but a fantastic novelist in her own right, writing about the social problems of the Victorian era - and though she isn't exactly working-class herself, she writes about the poor and working-class knowledgeably - she lived in Manchester for some time with her minister husband and this informed her writing.

Dr Virginia Apgar - had saved the lives of thousands of babies by noticing the early signs of life in newborn babies were vital in telling the outcomes for those babies in aneasthetised mothers. Until she developed the Apgar score (although it wasn't called that until about 10 years later) Drs were mostly concerned about the outcomes for the mothers so no one noticed the patterns among babies. Anyone born since the 50s in the Western world will have been given an Apgar score at 1 & 5 minutes after birth.

Also Betty Williams & Mairead Corrigan. Nobel peace prize winners after founding Women for Peace in Northern Ireland in the 70s after both were affected by the Troubles.

Great thread by the way. Hope it becomes a classic

I believe that the WSPU was one of the organisations that provided the food support as mentioned above, (though I can't find the book at the moment), which isn't to negate the problematic class elements of that organisation.

Other interesting figures in working class women's activism are Sylvia Pankhurst. though from a middle-class background herself, Esther Roper, from a working class background though a lesbian, so husband/children not relevant and Eva Gore-Booth, all of whom were a massive force in female participation in trade unionism.

Eva's sister was Constance Markiewicz, who was a huge figure in Irish Independence, as well as being the first women elected to the British Parliament, though she never took her seat.

if she hasn't already been mentioned Maria Santos Gorrostieta story here

Great thread. Thanks for the contributions. Days and days of reading to do...