Susan Sontag
American writer and critic
American writer and critic
Catherine Charlotte De la Gardie was influential in popularising smallpox vaccination in Sweden; she also successfully forestalled the country’s last witch trial.
The first patent for a hair straightener was filed on November 3, 1893 by Ada Harris
Egyptologist who spearheaded an international campaign to save 22 Nubian monuments in Egypt and Sudan, which would have been submerged by the lake created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
Annie MacDonald Langstaff earned her Bachelor of Civil Law in 1914, but the Bar of Montreal refused to allow her to take the bar exam to become a practising lawyer.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri became Switzerland’s first female law school graduate in 1887, but women were not allowed to practise law at the time because they lacked full citizenship.
Shannon Faulkner was seventeen when she applied to the American military college known as The Citadel. Knowing they only accepted males, she did not include her gender on her application and marked it out on her transcripts. Although she was accepted, the school reversed that decision upon finding out she was female. She sued for violation of her civil rights, as The Citadel was a public school that received state funding.
While working at the Bureau of Animal Industry, Evans began investigating the bacteria Bacillus abortus, which was known to cause miscarriages in animals.
The first woman in Germany to earn a PhD in chemistry
When Charlotte Moton Hubbard was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs in 1964, she became the highest-ranking Black woman in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, a testament to her many years of work in education, community relations, and government service.