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

[AwfulMaureen]

There are LOADS of women in history who've done incredible things or had amazing careers but have been forgotten...like an amazing singer from the twenties/thirties who also worked as a prostitute and who wrote and sang some of the most shockingly filthy songs in addition to having a stunning voice.

She began singing professionally as a child having been singing on the street for money...she was offered work in bars. ...I love Lucille Bogan...WARNING...don't play the song in the link if the kids are around!

Tell me your favourite unknown women?

[oinktopus]

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton toured America demanding suffrage and equal pay for women. Anthony was arrested and fined a huge sum simply for voting in an election. The amazing thing is the time period in which this happened. Anthony started campaigning in the 1840s.

[JodieGarberJacob]

The four Trout sisters of Hallsands in Devon. I can't find any links that do all of them justice. Unfortunately the hotel that they built has been redeveloped now but the story of their lives used to be in the foyer and made interesting reading.

[GossamerHailfilter]

Rosina Bulwer Lytton. Rose up against her husband to become a writer in her won right, despite her husband and his influential friends trying to have her certified insane. She was quite a character and although she did some questionable things, she did manage to have a voice in an age where women should be seen and not heard.

[GossamerHailfilter]

own

[ParsingFancy]

Victoria Mxenge.

Black South African born in 1942, so grew up on the wrong side of the 1953 Bantu Education Act. She trained as a nurse and midwife anyway, then studied law by distance learning and worked at her husband's law practice.

After her husband was murdered by the South African government in 1981, she carried on the law practice without him until she too was murdered by the government in 1985.

[LittleBabyPigsus]

Oinktopus Susan B Anthony was also massively racist though She actively campaigned for black people to lose the vote so women could gain it.

[neversaydie]

Isabella Bird. Victorian solo traveller in the USA, Australia, Hawaii, China, Korea, Malaysia and India. And wrote wonderful books about the places she went to.

[oinktopus]

Pigsus Eek! Not quite as noble as I thought.

[ParsingFancy]

Ruth First

Anti-apartheid activist detained, exiled and eventually murdered with a parcel bomb in 1982

Albertina Sisulu

Anti-apartheid activist who was a key figure in several important political groups, was frequently detained, and still managed to fit in her social development work for children and old people.

[HowGoodIsThat]

DD2 (Reception) came home and told me about Bessie Coleman . She dragged herself out of poverty and background of slavery and became the first Africian-AMerican aviatrix.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Hilda Gibson, who died recently aged 88. She was in in the Women's Land Army (a 'Land Girl') during WWII and later successfully campaigned for Land Girls to receive recognition for their war service.

You can listen to a fascinating interview with her here

[ParsingFancy]

Sophie Germain

Female mathematician born in France 1776, so overlaps with Paulze mentioned above. Her parents took away her clothes to stop her studying maths as it was "inappropriate for a woman".

Eventually they changed their minds, and she was able to start studying by correspondence with the Ecole Polytechnique, using a male pseudonym. She was slowly outed to Lagrange, Gauss and Legendre, and continued to work with them, although her work probably never reached its full potential due to her lack of early grounding in rigour.

[legoplayingmumsunite]

Came on here to say Dorothy Hodgkin, first British female Nobel Prize winner and yet much less known than Rosalind Franklin. Overlooked for the Nobel for years until Max Perutz won it and started to fight her case.

Wow, cinnamon, that's an interesting tale- bit like rosalind franklin then? Terrible!

Just wanted to comment on this. Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize because she was dead by the time it was awarded. She had a bad reputation because of James Watson's book but actually Frances Crick did a lot of work with her after the DNA structure and they got on very well, once she left Kings she did much better professionally because she wasn't as isolated. A lot of the problems she had at Kings may well have been due to anti-semitism as much as misogyny. Having said that I'm not sure how they would have split the Nobel Prize if she had been alive, since it can only be split 3 ways.

[Apatite1]

Grace Hopper

US navy rear admiral, computer pioneer and one of the reasons you and I are able to speak to each other on the internet:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

[BillyBanter]

Couple of wartime women of note:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettice_Curtis

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Szabo

[BillyBanter]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Morris

[FairPhyllis]

Williamina Fleming. Scottish astronomer who discovered the Horsehead Nebula.

Alice Kober. Made crucial contributions to deciphering the Linear B script.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Mary Anning. British fossil collector and self-taught palaeontologist extraordinaire.

As a working-class woman in 19th century Dorset, she never received the acknowledgement that was her due during her lifetime.

In 2010 (163 years after her death) the Royal Society named her as one of the ten British women who most influenced the history of science.

[AnAdventureInCakeAndWine]

You've probably heard about several of these, but:

Wangari Maathai (envionmental and political activist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize)

Phillis Wheatley (poet and former slave)

Mary Walker (doctor, surgeon, suffragist and abolitionist)

Henrietta Leavitt (astronomer whose discoveries enabled the distances to remote galaxies to be calculated)

Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle (Olympic swimmer; fifth person, and first woman, to swim the English Channel)

Alia Muhammad Baker (chief librarian of the Central Library in Basra, who managed to save 70% of the library's collection during the siege and bombing of Basra)

Maria Merian (naturalist, botanical artist, first to document many new species, made important discoveries about the lifecycle of butterflies and moths)

[ALMOSTMRSG]

Gladys Alyward.
Read about her at school and story has always remained with me. She was a Christian missionary who led over 100 children over the mountains in China to safety from the invading Japanese. She had little education and paid for her own ticket to China. Became a foot inspector for the Chinese government enforcing the ban on foot binding carried out on young girls and ran an orphanage.
Her story was told in the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Many have already been mentioned, but here's the Royal Society's list of the 10 most influential British women in the history of science.

[EllaFitzgerald]

Gladys Aylward. She worked as a parlourmaid in London, before taking herself off to China to work as a missionary. She did lots of good work there, before leading 100 orphans across the mountains to escape from the Japanese. Not bad for a parlourmaid.

[LittleBabyPigsus]

Oh and you will have heard of her but not of all her achievements - Beatrix Potter was actually a very accomplished botanist and mycologist (someone who studies fungi).

[EllaFitzgerald]

Almost You beat me to it!

[ILoveNiyaz]

What a lovely inspirational and uplifting thread. I'm sad it's on chat and will be deleted in 90 days, I've bookmarked it so I can research more about about these great women

My offering is Isabelle Eberhardt

Such an adventurous, courageous, fascinating, captivating woman. A true free soul. An excellent travel writer and intrepid traveler.

She was illegitimate and born into an aristocratic family and spoke 6 languages, her and her aristo mother converted to Islam, specifically sufism which was quite 'scandalous' back then. She traveled across North Africa in 1890 something, on her own dressed as a man! She called herself Si Mahmoud Essadi and died in a flash flood at the age of 27.

One of her quotes that inspires my travels :

“The cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit.”


The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt If I ever have a DD, I think I might name her after this woman.