1. Rosalind Franklin
Franklin was an English chemist and X-Ray crystallographer who is behind the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. Many textbooks may give credit to Watson and Crick, who managed to patten their invention before Franklin could, but the experimentation and science behind this discovery rightfully belongs to this 20th century scientist.
2. Hedy Lamarr
Lamarr was an American singer and actress, but first and foremost she was an inventor. She co-invented the technology for the spread spectrum and frequency hopping, which was important during WWII because it was used in controlling torpedoes. These inventions were also incorporated into Bluetooth and CDMA. Lamarr is the primary reason we have Wi-Fi today.
3. Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley published Frankenstein when she was around 20, but there is strong evidence that she started writing the novel when she was only 16. Shelley is also mostly credited with beginning the genre of science fiction.
4. Marie Curie
Curie was a physicist and chemist that conducted the pioneering research on radioactivity. Her dedication to scientific research cost Curie her health, for she acquired cancer from her extensive exposure to radioactivity. She is the reason we have the X-Ray today.
5. Maya Angelou
Angelou was an American author, poet, dancer, actress, and singer. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She is credited to be one the greatest female literary authors of all time.
6. Claudette Colvin
Colvin is a pioneer of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. She was the first to refuse to sit at the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama nine months before Rosa Parks. Colvin was only a young girl, so the movement decided her impact wouldn’t be as broad as Parks’.
7. Frida Kahlo
Kahlo was a Mexican painter who suffered life long health problems, bed ridden for half of her life, and still managed to paint amazing works that we still revere and study today.
8. Helen Keller
Keller is often the punchline of many jokes due to her disabilities, but in reality she was a strong and stubborn activist of women’s rights, Socialism, and people with disabilities. Keller did a lot more than just learn the alphabet deaf and blind at a young age. She founded and promoted the American Foundation for the Blind.
9. Sojourner Truth
Truth was an African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. She was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She was the first black woman to win a case against a white man.
10. Mae Carol Jemison
Jemison became the first African-American to travel in space in 1992. She was hand selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and humanities, and has even starred in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
