Writers, scientists, actresses, politicians or aviators, among alternative professions. There are many women who have changed history in the time they lived and who have played a fundamental role in the development of events . Great revolutionaries who, day by day, broke with what was established in each of their fields and, also, in society. Brave women who paved the way for so many others who, in their fight for equality , have made the world a fairer place .
Today, in Toads and Princesses, we pay a humble tribute to 20 women who marked a before and after in history and who guided (and guide) our steps in the battle for a society in which being a woman does not close doors and machismo . Does not exist. Although, there is no doubt, we still have a lot of work to do.
1. Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, better known as Marie Curie, was a scientist of Polish origin (nationalized French) who completely revolutionized the world of science with her work and discoveries. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity — she discovered two new elements: Polonium and Radium — she was the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different specialties (physics and chemistry). She and she the first woman to hold the position of professor at the University of Paris.
Marie Curie had to fight to become a scientist, since in Poland women could not access university studies . She had to combine the care of her two daughters with her scientific career.
2.Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Virginia Woolf was a British novelist, essayist, editor and feminist, considered one of the most outstanding figures of twentieth-century literary modernism . The high quality of her works and the recognition and fame she achieved during her lifetime earned her a position of great relevance in that movement. This made her establish herself as one of the most significant figures in London society during the interwar period.
All her rehearsals, and especially one of them, called A Room of Her Own , helped her become one of the main promoters and a great symbol of the 20th century feminist movement . Virginia Woolf marked a before and after in the thinking of her contemporaries and later writers of hers.
3. Coco Chanel (1883 – 1971)
This great designer completely revolutionized the world of fashion and haute couture in a particularly difficult time: the interwar period. She managed to break out of the corseted clothes of the Belle Époque . She gave a new twist to women’s garments, which, from her irruption in fashion, began to be more comfortable and informal. Thus, she freed women from corsets (literally and metaphorically) and cumbersome adornments that limited her movements.
4. Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)
This American aviator became famous for attempting the first aerial trip around the world over the equator. Amelia became a world hero worshipped by the lots. She promoted a profound discussion on women’s rights and gender equality within the 1st decades of the last century. Earhart founded an organization for women aviators, The Ninety-Nines, in 1929. She was a professor of Aviation at Purdue University, she was a columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine and a campaigner for women’s rights.
Despite not having been able to fulfill her dream of going round the world by plane (although she came terribly about to achieving it), Earhart went down in history for her courage and bravery and for being a pioneer in the fight for gender equality. rights .
5. Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)
Mexican painter who has become one of the great references of current feminism . Frida Kahlo not only revolutionized the world of art, but also that of politics. A friend of prominent national and international artists, Frida is so important that she was the first artist from this country to present one of her works at the Louvre Museum. Her political ideas were revolutionary at a time when women were considered the weaker sex .
Frida defended the cause of indigenous people in Mexico and, as part of her national feeling, recovered their symbols and traditions in her work.
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6. Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005)
Rosa Parks was a faithful defender of civil rights in the United States at a time when the separation of people for racial or religious reasons was still predominant in most of the southern states. With just a gesture, Rosa Parks managed to cause the first spark of the Civil Rights movement , refusing to give up her seat to a white on December 1, 1955. It is necessary to remember that, as incredible as it is, the laws of racial segregation of the time could force an African American to give up his seat to any white man.
As recounted in National Geographic , with this act, Rosa Parks, assistant in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, caught the attention of Martin Luther King and, together, they undertook the protests that would lead to the Supreme Court of the United States. United to declare that racial segregation in transportation was against the country’s constitution.
7. Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
She was an English chemist and crystallographer , responsible for important contributions to the structure of DNA, RNA, viruses, carbon and graphite. She was a scientist unjustly forgotten by the world of science, strongly masculinized at that time.
So much so that in 1962 three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA, when, ten years earlier, Rosalind Franklin had managed to photograph the B side of hydrated DNA , the famous photo 51, a key piece to get to find it. Thanks to her, Crick and Watson were able to observe that the shape of DNA was not what they thought and establish the necessary connections to determine its structure.
8. Anne Frank (1929 – 1945)
Known worldwide thanks to her Diary , Anne Frank was a German Jewish girl who lived almost two and a half years hiding, with her family and four other people, from the Nazis in Dutch capital throughout warfare II. Ana was sent to the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz on September two, 1944 and, later, to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, wherever she died of typhus fever in March 1945. In her diary she recorded all her suffering and the that the Jewish people suffered .
Trying to posthumously fulfill Anne’s wish to become a writer, expressed in the Diary , Otto Frank, her father and the only survivor of the family, decided to publish it. Over the years, it became a worldwide symbol of the fight against Nazism .
9. Carrie Fisher (1956 – 2016)
She was an actress, writer and film and television screenwriter known mainly for playing Princess Leia Organa in the popular Star Wars saga. Leia was a warrior and fighter princess, the protagonist of this highly popular story of galactic adventures. In a world where princesses were rescued by knights-errant, Carrie brought to life one of the first feminists in film history and one of the most famous female characters on the big screen.
Outside of Star Wars , Carrie had to fight to gain a foothold in a male-dominated world and to be treated with the same respect as her own peers. Beyond Star Wars , Carrie continued to work in the world of film and literature until the end of her days.
10. Malala Yousafzai (1997)
Malala is a Pakistani student, activist, and blogger. Among the great achievements that she has achieved at her young age is that of being the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize . Her heartbreaking story is already known worldwide and has opened the eyes of society.
Her civil rights activism is her most prominent undertaking, especially that of women in the Swat River Valley, Pakistan, where the Taliban regime banned girls from attending school. Due to her struggle, on October 9, 2012, in Mingora, she was the victim of an attack perpetrated by a terrorist group linked to the Taliban. But far from cowing her, they got Malala to continue fighting for the rights of Pakistani women today.
11. Sally Ride (1951-2012)
She was a young woman in her early 20s with a brilliant academic resume behind her when she stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime. In 1978, she joined NASA and began a successful career in the world of space aviation.
After working as a cabin communicator on different flights, Sally finally managed to get out of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was June 18, 1983, when she became the first American woman to do so. She was part of the Challenger shuttle mission STS-7 as one of its crew. A year later, she made her second flight. She would thus get to spend more than 343 hours in space. She was preparing for her third voyage when the tragic Challenger accident occurred on January 28, 1986. Since then, she has devoted herself fully to its investigation.
12. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)
Year 1849. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman enrolled in the medical school of Geneva. She too, she the first citizen of the entire United States to achieve an official diploma that qualified her as a doctor. She not only stood out for being a pioneer in American medicine. She too, for her defense of women’s education and abolitionism.
Since 1949, the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal has been awarded each year by the American Medical Women’s Association . The objective: to recognize those who have contributed in an outstanding way to the work of the doctors.
13. Donna Strickland (1959)
It is very likely that the term ‘frequency slip laser’ sounds Chinese to you. However, it is a revolutionary technique that is much closer to our lives than we think. If you have had an eye operation, or know someone who has, you will know them well, even if you don’t know it. It is the basis for the high-intensity lasers used today throughout the world for eye surgery. The person in charge is Donna Strickland. When she was a young Ph.D. student at the University of Rochester, in 1985, she published a paper describing a technique called Chirped Pulse Amplification .
For her, more than 30 years later, he would receive the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics. Thus, she became the first woman in the 21st century to receive the award in this category and the third in the entire history of Nobel Prizes, behind Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
14. Emmy Noether (1882-1935)
Emmy Noether Amalie was one in all the nice mathematical minds of the twentieth century. Considered the mother of abstract algebra, her work opened new paths that fundamentally marked the path followed by contemporary mathematics. Her analysis of the groups of symmetries that appear in the special and general theories of relativity allowed her to understand and solve the problem of conservation of energy in Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
However, Emmy Noether was denied a decent job at the university for the whole of her life for the sole, openly acknowledged reason of being a woman.
15.Margaret Hamilton (1936)
On the Apollo 11 moon landing, the astronauts, control center, software, and hardware worked together as a continuous integrated system. But none of this would have been possible without the contributions of an engineer: Margaret Hamilton. A visionary of computer programming. The first female software engineer. She was in charge, along with her team, of designing some of the software that made the Command Module and the Lunar Module work. She was probably, she was the person who prevented the failure of the mission.
Margaret was a true pioneer in a time when programming was not even considered a science. She helped create what would become the foundations of software engineering. Another of her important legacies is her enthusiasm to encourage girls and young women to study scientific-technical careers.
16. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
Augusta Ada Byron, better known as Ada Lovelace by her title of countess, was a British mathematician and writer. She was famous, above all, for her work on Charles Babbage’s general-purpose calculator, called the Analytical Engine. Her notes about her contain what is now recognized as the first algorithm encoded for a machine to process. She is considered the first computer programmer.
The day that bears her name is celebrated on the second Tuesday of October, with the aim of raising the profile of women in STEM areas.
17. Mary Mitchell (1818-1889)
Maria Mitchell liked to spend her nights on the roof of her family’s house scanning the sky and the stars with her telescope. On October 1, 1847, she was studying a segment of the sky that she already knew when she found a white spot on it that had not been there before. Her father encouraged her to go public with her discovery. The revelation of this finding of hers made her famous and led to her becoming the first woman to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Many people came to visit her and wanted to meet her, as she was the first American to have discovered a comet.
Disappointed that the number of girls with scientific knowledge was very limited in her country, she participated in the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. In her role as teacher, she encouraged them not to let being female discourage them from her endeavors.
18. Sheila Minor (1946)
Echoes of biologist Sheila Minor’s story begin on Twitter. Illustrator Candace Jean Andersen found a photograph taken at an international scientific conference on the biology of whales in 1971. It featured several men and one woman. In the photo caption, all the men named. However, Minor was the only one unidentified. The artist asked for help and Twitter did the magic for her. Behind the hashtag #SheilaMinorHuff, a story. A life dedicated to science, that of a biological research technician with a professional career of 35 years behind her.
Minor had to deal with sexual and racial harassment in her professional career. In fact, it was the reason she quit her current job to join the Smithsonian Institution’s Environmental Research Center. According to her, a more conducive and ‘tolerable’ environment.
19. Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)
Hedy Lamarr, apart from being a well-known Austrian actress, developed the spread spectrum theory, the precursor to WiFi , during World War II. The invention of a secret communications system for radio-controlled torpedoes laid the technological foundation for inventions that we consider ‘modern’, such as WiFi or GPS. However, the invention would not be exploited until the 1960s , when the patent was used to develop wireless military communications for guided missiles.
20. Margarita Salas (1938-2019)
The biochemist Margarita Salas was a pioneer in the history of science and research in Spain. She was one of the best Spanish scientists of the 20th century and among the many achievements of her career, the discovery of the DNA polymerase of the phi29 bacteriophage virus, crucial in biotechnology, stands out. It allows amplifying DNA more quickly, easily and reliably. It is applied in forensic medicine, oncology and archaeology. Currently, this patent continues to be the most profitable of the CSIC and thanks to it, millions of euros have been invested in research.
Throughout her career she was awarded several times and received both national and international awards. Among them are the Mendel Medal, the Ramón y Cajal National Award, the L’Oreal Unesco Award and the Echegaray Medal. In addition, she was the first Spanish woman elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2007.
