PROFILES OF EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN

	Jane Addams, Nobel Prize winner & social worker		Rosa Parks , activist
	Susan B. Anthony, activist		Nancy Pelosi, politician
	Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, physician		Dr. Sally Ride, astronaut
	Shirley Chisholm, politician		Margaret Sanger, family planning advocate
	bell hooks, writer and educator		Elizabeth Cady Stanton, activist
	Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, computer pioneer		Lucy Stone, activist
	Dolores Huerta, labor organizer		Sojourner Truth, abolitionist
	Shirley Ann Jackson, physicist		Dr. Mary E. Walker, surgeon & activist
	Henrietta Leavitt, astronomer		Dr. Chien-Shung Wu, nuclear physicist

Jane Addams, Nobel Prize winner & social worker
(1860 - 1935)

While travelling through Europe, Ms. Addams visited a settlement house, which provided services to the poverty-stricken residents of London's East End. In 1889, she opened a similar facility in Chicago's poor immigrant ward. Known as Hull House, it grew to include a day nursery, trade school, library, and employment office.

Along with other labor and reform organizations, she advocated justice for immigrants and African Americans, tenement-house regulation, workers' compensation, and women's suffrage. In 1909, she became the first woman elected president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.

Based on lectures she gave at the University of Wisconsin, Ms. Addams' book Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) was one of her many efforts to promote world peace. In December, 1931, Ms. Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Susan B. Anthony, activist
(1820 - 1906)

Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony fought tirelessly for more than thirty years on behalf of women's rights to own property, earn equal pay, and have access to education.

Born in Adams, Massachusetts, she was raised in a staunch Quaker family that valued hard work, moral justice, and a belief that God regarded men and women as equals.

In 1872, she led a group of women to the polls in Rochester, New York, where they were arrested for attempting to vote. Eventually tried and convicted of violating voting laws, she used the days leading up to her trial to publicize her campaign for women's national suffrage. Although she did not live long enough to witness the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, she remains an enduring symbol of equal rights.

In 1979, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was circulated. It was the first U.S. currency to feature an historical female figure since the 19th century, when Martha Washington adorned a silver-backed note.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, physician
(1821 - 1910)

Refused enrollment by nearly every medical school she applied to, Ms. Blackwell was finally accepted at the Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York. In 1849, despite initial hostility from teachers and fellow students, she became the first woman to graduate from medical school.

Unable to secure employment at any of the hospitals and dispensaries in New York because they would not hire a female doctor, she bought a house and established her own private practice, treating women and children from the city's slums.

With her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, and Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska, she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. After the Civil War, they also opened the Women's Medical College at the Infirmary. The following year, she lectured in England, inspiring women to pursue a career in medicine, and founded the London School of Medicine for Women.

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Shirley Chisholm, political activist
(1924 - 2005)

A tireless advocate for the unemployed, for low-wage workers, for women, for children, and for people of color, Shirley Chisholm was one of the great initiators of political change for our nation.

In 1968, Ms. Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress, and founded the Congressional Black Caucus as the "Conscience of the Congress." During her second-term, she co-founded the National Organization for Women remarking that,

"Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes."

Serving in the U.S. Congress from the late 1960's to the late 1970's, Chisholm was talking about civil rights, about the rights of the poor and the marginalized, and those who did not yet have a voice in the mainstream political discussion. In 1972, when she became the first African American woman to actively run for the presidency of the United States, she won ten percent of the votes at the Democratic National Convention.

Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, NY, but returned to her parents home country of Barbados before returning to the U.S. at the age of ten. There she went to high school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that she would eventually serve as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Although she received scholarhsip offers from both Oberlin College and Vassar College, she stayed close to home and attended Brooklyn college, from where she graduated cum laude in 1946. She then worked as a nursery school teacher and a director of schools for early childhood education. After many years of teaching, she turned to her interest in politics, and in 1964 won a seat in the NY State Assembly.

Chisholm worked for four years in the State Assembly and then ran for U.S. Congress in her home district of Bedford-Stuyvesant. She won the election for that district in 1968 and became the first black woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. She continued to be an advocate for increased rights and opportunities for blacks, the poor, and women, and a staunch supporter of education. Chisholm protested the traditional roles for women professionals — secretaries, teachers, and librarians. She argued that women were capable of entering many other professions and that they should be encouraged to do so. Black women, too, she felt, had been shunted into stereotypical maid and nanny roles from which they needed to escape both by legislation and by self-effort.

Chisholm was also an anti-war protester, which was one of many reasons she chose to run for President in the 1972 election. Even though George McGovern won the Democratic nomination, Chisholm received ten percent of the delegates' votes at the Democratic Convention. She retired from Congress in 1982.

Chisholm wrote two autobiographical accounts, Unbought and Unbossed in 1970, and The Good Fight in 1973. She died after suffering several strokes at the age of 80 on January 1, 2005.

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bell hooks, professor and writer
(1952 - )

bell hooks was born Gloria Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1952. She received her BA from Stanford, an MA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written over 25 books and taught at several colleges and universities, inlcluding Yale University, Oberlin College, City College of New York, and Southwestern University. Most recenlty, in 2004 hooks joined Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, as Distinguished Professor in Residence.

hooks has written about many of our society's most pressing issues, but perhaps most notably she has focused on the interconnectivity between race and gender in the United States. In her later writings, hooks has strived to use language that is accessible to as many people as possible, hoping to avoid an elite or academic tone. She has also written many children's books.

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Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, computer pioneer
(1906 - 1992)

Born in New York City, Rear Admiral Hopper was the first programmer on the U.S. Navy’s Mark I computer, the first woman awarded a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University, and coined the term “debugging” after removing a moth from a computer.

Hopper graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with a BA in Mathematics and Physics. She joined Vassar’s faculty in 1931, continuing her studies in Mathematics at Yale, where she earned an MA in 1930, and a Ph.D. in 1934.

In 1943, Hopper joined the U.S. Navy Reserve. She served as a Lieutenant (JG) at the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she became the first programmer on the Navy’s Mark I computer. In 1946, she traced a computer error to a moth trapped in a Mark II computer relay, which is why today we call a computer glitch a “bug.” In 1946, she joined Eckert-Machly Computer Corp. (which later became Sperry Rand), where she was a member of the team that developed Flow-Matic, the first English-language data-processing compiler.

Rear Admiral Hopper retired from the Navy in 1986, at the age of 80. She was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Department of Defense’s highest honor, and the National Medal of Technology. She died on December 31, 1999, at the age of 94, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. An Aegis Destroyer, “The Amazing Grace,” was named in her honor.

Dolores Huerta, labor organizer
(born April 10, 1930)

In 1962, Ms. Huerta and Cesar Chavez co-founded what later became the United Farm Workers of America. They joined with members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in the "Delano Grape Strike", where 5,000 grape workers pushed for higher wages. With Ms. Huerta acting as chief negotiator, the resulting agreement established the first health and benefit plans for farmworkers.

Raised in the migrant farm community of California's San Joaquin Valley, Ms. Huerta was exposed early to community activism. She left teaching, believing that she could best help the poor children of the community by fighting for better working conditions for their parents. As a member of the Community Service Organization in Stockton, she campaigned against segregation, and fought to improve public services for farm workers.

By organizing peaceful demonstrations and consumer boycotts, and lobbying on the state and federal level, Ms. Huerta helped bring about the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and the Immigration Act of 1985.

Shirley Ann Jackson, physicist, professor, university president
(1946 - )

Shirley Ann Jackson is a theoretical physicist, professor, and now President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. Dr. Jackson has had a distinguished career in academia, private research, and government.

Since receiving her PhD from the Massachusetts Institue of Technology (M.I.T.) in 1973, Jackson has been at the forefront of nuclear physics research. After finishing her doctorate, Jackson continued her research on sub-atomic particles at distinguished laboratories in the United States and abroad. In 1976 she joined the prestigious AT&T Bell Laboratories, while also lecturing at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. She worked at Bell Laboratories from 1976 t0 1991, conducting research in theoretical physics.

In 1991 Dr. Jackson began teaching both undergraduate and graduate physics at Rutgers University, while continuing to consult at Bell Laboratories. She remained at Rutgers until 1995, when President Bill Clinton appointed her to serve as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), where she remained until 1999. As Chairman, Dr. Jackson was ultimately responsible for all functions at the NRC, which is responsible for all safety concerns related to nuclear energy use.

In 1999 Shirley Ann Jackson was named President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). For more information on Dr. Jackson's impressive career and contributions to our society, please visit her profile page on RPI's website. Here is a brief list from RPI's website of some of Dr. Jackson's disctinctions:

Dr. Jackson is the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate from M.I.T. — in any subject. She is one of the first two African-American women to receive a doctorate in physics in the U.S. She is the first African-American to become a Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She is both the first woman and the first African-American to serve as the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and now the first African-American woman to lead a national research university. She also is the first African-American woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

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Henrietta Leavitt, astronomer
(1868 - 1921)

Leavitt was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended Oberlin College and Radcliffe College, where she discovered astronomy. After suffering a serious illness which left her severely deaf, Leavitt volunteered at the Harvard College Observatory in 1895. Seven years later, she was appointed to a permanent staff position, and later became head of the photographic photometry department, which studied photo images of stars to determine their magnitude.

Described by a colleague as “the most brilliant woman at Harvard,” she was unable to fully pursue advancement in her field because of her gender. But that did not stop her from discovering the relationship between the time it took a star to go from bright to dim and how bright the star actually was. This is known as the cepheid variable period-luminosity relationship, and allowed astronomers such as Edwin Hubble to make their own groundbreaking discoveries. In 1913, she developed the standard photographic measurement of stars known as the Harvard Standard.

Throughout her twenty-six years as an astronomer, Henrietta Leavitt discovered more than 2,400 variable stars, almost half of the known stars at the time.

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Rosa Parks, activist
(1913-2005)

In December 1955, on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Parks was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was tired and refused to give up her seat. With her subsequent arrest, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on a public bus unconstitutional a year later, and Rosa Parks remains a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, continuing to be active well into her 70s.

Rosa Parks died of natural causes on October 25, 2005, in her home in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 92. As a national tribute and memorial, her coffin was placed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for two days. She was the first woman to ever receive this honor, and only the second African-American.

Click here to learn more about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

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Nancy Pelosi, politician and first ever woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
(1940 - )

On January 4, Nancy Pelosi made history, breaking the marble ceiling to become the first woman to serve as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.  For the last four years, Nancy Pelosi has led House Democrats with remarkable effectiveness as House Democratic Leader.  Elected in 2003 as the first woman to lead a major political party in Congress, Pelosi has built consensus and unified the Democratic caucus. A recent study by Congressional Quarterly found that “over the past half-century, Democrats in the House were never more unified” than they were under Pelosi in 2005, voting together a record 88 percent of the time. 

Pelosi comes from a strong family tradition of public service.  Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., served as Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years, after representing the city for five terms in Congress. Her brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also served as Mayor of Baltimore.

Pelosi graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C.  She and her husband, Paul Pelosi, a native of San Francisco, have five grown children: Nancy Corinne, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul and Alexandra, and six grandchildren.  While raising her five children prior to her election to Congress, Pelosi served in a number of positions including Chair of the California Democratic Party.  She has represented California’s Eighth District, which includes most of San Francisco, since 1987.

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Dr. Sally Ride, astronaut
(born May 26th, 1951)

Born in Encino, California, Dr. Ride earned a bachelor of science in Physics, a bachelor of arts in English, and a master of science in Physics at Stanford University. In 1977, while working on her Ph.D. in Astrophysics, she became one of 35 applicants accepted into NASA's astronaut program (over 8,000 people applied).

In August, 1979 she completed an extensive one-year training and evaluation period, which included parachute jumping, water survival, gravity and weightlessness training, radio communications and navigation; the experience made her eligible for assignment to future Space Shuttle flight crews. On June 18th, 1983 she became the first American woman in space.

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January, 1986 Dr. Ride served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. In 1987, she left NASA and returned to Stanford University as a Science Fellow at the Center for International Security & Arms Control. She is currently on the faculty of UC San Diego, where she heads the California Space Institute.

Dr. Ride was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center on June 21, 2003

Margaret Sanger, family planning advocate
(1879 - 1966)

A visiting nurse in New York City's Lower East Side, Margaret Sanger cared for many of the poor women whose health suffered from frequent childbirth, miscarriage and abortion. She worked to give working-class women access to accurate and effective birth control.

At the time, "Comstock Laws" on the federal and state level banned the distribution of birth control information. Ms. Sanger wrote in magazines and newsletters supporting a woman's right to birth control. Her articles were banned several times and led to her arrest for violating postal obscenity laws. After studying birth control methods in England and the Netherlands, she returned to America in 1916, and opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. After only nine days, the clinic was raided and the staff arrested.

In 1936, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that doctors were exempt from the Comstock Laws, making it legal for them give women information on contraception. Ms. Sanger continued lobbying for birth control legislation and shifted the movement's message towards more mainstream values. Ms. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1942, changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, activist
(1815 - 1902)

Ms. Stanton worked alongside Susan B. Anthony as President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, writing and lecturing on a wide variety of social and political issues, including the reform of divorce laws, coeducation, and a married woman's rights to property and wages.

In 1848, Ms. Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, for which she drafted the "The Declaration of Sentiments". As radical as the Declaration was at the time, she received the most condemnation for The Woman's Bible, which studied sexism in the Old Testament.

When she married Henry Stanton, an abolitionist activist, they agreed to omit the word "obey" from their vows, and the family home remained in Ms. Stanton's name to insure her financial independence.

Lucy Stone, activist
(1818 - 1893)

A gifted speaker who lectured for the American Anti-slavery Society, it was Lucy Stone's speech at a women's rights convention that converted Susan B. Anthony to the women's suffrage cause.

Ms. Stone enrolled at Oberlin College and studied Greek and Hebrew. In 1847, she became the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree. When she married Henry Blackwell, an abolitionist and brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, they agreed that Lucy would keep her maiden name.

Ms. Stone split with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and founded the American Woman Suffrage Association because of disagreements. They reunited in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Sojourner Truth, abolitionist
(1797? - 1883)

Born Isabella Bomefree in upstate New York, Sojourner Truth served five masters before escaping with her daughter in 1826. After slavery was abolished in the state of New York, she successfully regained custody of her son Peter, who had been illegally sold and taken to Alabama.

In New York City, she became a travelling pentecostal preacher and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. A powerful speaker, she talked about the oppression of women as well as slaves. Ms. Truth is best remembered for her "'Ain't I A Woman?" speech, given at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

After emancipation, she moved to Washington, D.C., and launched a successful campaign to remove Jim Crow laws from the city's public transportation system.

Dr. Mary E. Walker, surgeon & activist
(1832 - 1919)

When Civil War broke out in 1861, Dr. Mary Walker treated the Union Army's wounded as an assistant surgeon, despite the military's refusal to grant her a medical officer's commission because of her gender. Upon recommendations from Major Generals William T. Sherman and George H. Thomas, she became the first woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

After the war, Dr. Walker lectured across the nation on women's issues, such as reforming divorce laws and allowing married women to retain their last name. She was ridiculed for her beliefs, and in 1917 her Medal of Honor was revoked along with 910 others in an effort to "...increase the prestige of the grant."

On June 10, 1977, President Jimmy Carter restored her medal posthumously, and she remains the only woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during wartime.

Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, nuclear physicist
(1912 - 1997)

Born in China, Dr. Wu received her Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1957, while teaching at Columbia University, she disproved what was considered a fundamental law of nature for 30 years - the law of conservation of parity.

Among her many "firsts", Dr. Wu was the first woman to receive the Comstock Award from the National Academy of Sciences (1964), the first Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University (1972), the first woman elected president of the American Physical Society (1975), and the first living scientist to have an asteroid named after her (1990).

Later in her career, Dr. Wu applied advanced biophysics in her research on sickle-cell anemia.

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