Marie Curie heads list of 100 most significant women
MARIE CURIE has been voted the woman to have made the most significant impact on world history.
The Polish-born French scientist, the first person to win two Nobel prizes, carried out research into radioactivity, a term that she coined, making possible effective cures for cancer.
Her latest achievement is to have appeared at the top of a list of 100 women who changed the world, compiled by BBC History
Magazine. It also includes Margaret Thatcher, Diana, Princess of Wales, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Virgin Mary.
The magazine asked experts in 10 different fields of human endeavour to each nominate 10 women they believe had the biggest impact.
Patricia Fara, president of the British Society for the History of Science, said the odds had been stacked against Mme Curie. “In Poland her patriotic family suffered under a Russian regime. In France she was regarded with suspicion as a foreigner – and of course, wherever she went, she was discriminated against as a woman,” Ms Fara said.
The top 100 women were chosen for their achievements in politics, science, sport, technology and literature, and saw the likes of BBC Radio 4’s Dame Jenni Murray and historian Suzannah Lipscomb among those putting together the shortlist.
In second place was Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who protested against segregation on the buses in Alabama.
Ms Pankhurst, leader of the British suffragette movement, was third.
The scientist Ada Lovelace, a computer programmer and mathematician, and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin were in fourth and fifth places respectively.
Lady Thatcher is in sixth place, while Diana, Princess of Wales, is at number 15. Other names in the top 20 include the writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen, the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, Queen Victoria and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Charlotte Hodgman, deputy editor of the magazine, said: “Whilst it is unsurprising to see queens such as Victoria and Eleanor of Aquitaine place high, it is refreshing to see some more unfamiliar names make the top 20, such as 19th-century philanthropist, Angela Burdett-Coutts.”
She added that in the centenary year of women getting the vote, it was fitting that Ms Pankhurst and her fellow suffrage campaigner Josephine Butler had made the top 20.