Women Who Changed the World

women-who-changed-the-world

Charlotte Walton, Senior Marketing Manager, Library Field Marketing, Wiley

March 07, 2022

Celebrating historical women this international women’s day

This international women’s day we celebrate women all over the world whose contributions to science, medicine, and the humanities have often been overlooked.

Through Wiley Digital Archives researchers are uncovering the original work of incredible women who were pioneers in their field. Today we spotlight six historical activists from different countries and fields of research who were all determined to live life on their own terms, further education in their field, and pave the way for women in the future.

Six women who changed the world

Annie Smith Peck, United States (1850 –1935)

“The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.”

Annie Smith Peck was a skilled mountaineer, explorer, public lecturer, author, and suffragist. She was the first person to climb the snow-covered north peak of Huascarán in Peru, which the country later named after her.

When Smith Peck climbed the Matterhorn in 1895 the press didn’t focus on the achievement but on the clothes that she wore, claiming that she “provoked moral outrage” by wearing trousers. In 1909, she planted a flag that read “Votes for Women!” on the summit of Mount Coropuna.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, United Kingdom (1836 – 1917)

“I asked my father what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me.”

Pioneering physician, political campaigner and suffragist, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman in Britain to gain a medical qualification. In 1872 she was co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women and, as mayor of Aldeburgh in 1908, the first female mayor in Britain.

Anderson's determination paved the way for other women, and in 1876 an act was passed permitting women to enter the medical professions

From the archives: Letter and research paper to Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer

Wangari Maathai, Kenya (1940 – 2011)

“No matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to next generation or the generation after that.”

Wangari Maathai was a biologist, environmental activist, and one of the first women in Africa to earn a Ph.D., and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, focusing on tree planting, environmental conservation, and women’s rights.

The movement spread to other African countries and contributed to the planting of over thirty million trees. In the words of the Nobel Committee, "She thinks globally and acts locally."

From the archives: Case notes from the committee on the Human Rights of Scientists

Freya Stark, Italy (1893 – 1993)

“One life is an absurdly small allowance.”

By the time explorer and travel writer Freya Stark passed away shortly after her 100^th birthday she had travelled the world, learned at least seven languages, and served in two world wars. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and was one of the first westerners to travel through the southern Arabian Desert.

Stark traveled so many undocumented territories that she learned how to make her own maps. Despite the dangers of being a solo female traveler, and contracting multiple illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, Stark never stopped exploring the world.

From the archives: Details of expedition route in Amd-Izzam, 1938

Kathleen Lonsdale, Ireland (1903 – 1971)

“No person shall be refused admission to the laboratory as a worker or as an assistant to a worker by reason of his or her nationality or sex.”

Kathleen Lonsdale was a pacifist, prison reformer, early pioneer of x-ray crystallography, and the first female professor at University College London. She applied crystallographic techniques to treat medical problems such as bladder and kidney stones.

Lonsdale was president of the British section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and was deeply concerned with ethics and science, often campaigning about the implications and dangers of nuclear physics. In 1967, active in encouraging young people to study science, she was elected as the first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

From the archives: Scientific correspondence with mining corporations

Reina Torres de Araúz, Panama (1932-1982)

“It would be a great honour and only right for us to be able to exhibit in our small museums this artistic wealth made by our forebears in which the Panamanians of today can justifiably take pride.”

De Araúz was a prominent anthropologist, ethnographer, professor and activist. She undertook extensive field work in the jungles and mountains of Panama and was dedicated to preservation of the indigenous peoples of Panama, denouncing the illegal removal of archaeological evidence from the sites and writing to American museums to personally request that Panamanian archaeological evidence be returned to their original sites.

Today she is considered to be a "tireless defender" of Panamanian heritage ethnography and has an anthropology museum in Panama named after her.

From the archives: Letter to the Royal Anthropological Society

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