Photo: Boston Globe Getty Images
Kathy Switzer
Despite multiple attempts from the race director to remove her from the course, Kathy Switzer became the first female to participate in the Boston Marathon with an official race number in 1967. She later went on to win the 1974 New York City Marathon, and even led the movement to include the women’s marathon in the Olympics.
Image: Boyer/Getty Images
Marie Curie
Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to have won a Nobel Prize in two different areas. Her groundbreaking work advanced the use of radiation to treat illness and furthered research around nuclear physics.
Image courtesy of Ohio State University
Ayanna Howard
An entrepreneur, a pioneering roboticist, the head of Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, Howard is one of Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women Engineers.” She is currently working to design a robot that can help children with special needs live healthier, better lives.
Photo credit: AP Images
Sandra Day O'Connor
O'Conner was the first woman appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1981. She faced many challenges in her career in Law. After graduating from law school, she said that at least 40 firms denied her an interview simply because she was a woman!
Photo: Courtesy NASA, via Wikimedia Commons
Mae Carol Jemison
Jemison, an engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. In 1989, she became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Folllowing her career with NASA, in 1993 she founded a technology research company. She later formed a non-profit educational foundation and through the foundation is the principal of the 100 Year Starship project funded by DARPA.
