Pioneer

Maria Montessori

Born in Italy in 1870, Maria Montessori enrolled in the University of Rome's school of medicine in 1893. As a woman, she faced hostility from both fellow students and professors, but despite opposition, graduated with her degree and set up a [...]

Helen Keller

Born in Alabama in 1880, Helen Keller contracted an illness which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis which left her both deaf and blind at 19 months old. When she was six years old, her mother was referred to Perkins [...]

Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Bell was a writer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer who helped establish modern day Jordan and Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Both the British government and the Arab leaders claimed that she was valuable help thanks to her [...]

Dr Jane Goodall

"My job is giving people hope" • This video interview is part of the Human – the movie project Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in London. Jane had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of [...]

Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska Curie was born on 7 November in 1867 in Poland (later naturalised French). The physicist and chemist pioneered the research on radioactivity together with her husband Pierre Curie. Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques [...]

Mary Somerville

Mary Somerville: Pioneer Scientist Mary Fairfax Somerville was born on 27 December 1780, the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax (scion of a distinguished family of Fairfaxes), and was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother. She was informally taught [...]

Janet Yellen

Janet Yellen: First woman Chair of US Federal Reserve Janet Yellen became the new chair of the US Federal Reserve on 31 January 2014. Yellen, 67, is the first woman to head the US Federal Reserve in its 100 year history, [...]

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