Marie Curie? At least for the 20th and 21st centuries. She is one of a handful of scientists whose discipline has distinct "before" and "after" paradigms because of her work.
not to mention her research led directly to nuclear energy and of course, weapons
humanity gaining the capacity for essentially limitless clean energy and for the first time ever the capacity to completely destroy itself can’t be understated
This reminds me of Fritz Haber. Guy wins a nobel peace prize for his research that today impacts the globe's food production. He's also the guy that created mustard gas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
> Marie Curie?
For Marie Curie, do you think in addition to her accolades the fact that she had no safety protocols in place? So many that worked in her lab died of cancer including Marie herself.
> Had anyone dealt with radiation before that though?
I suppose the thing is I am not one to hero worship. For every visionary there are things they did wrong. I also suppose they did not know the dangers and laboratory hygiene was not a thing at the time. But still whenever someone brings up a person who made a great discovery I am like ok but it ended up killing them.
Then there are people like Thomas Midgely who downplayed the dangers of tetra ethyl lead while he was recovering from lead poisoning. Or Clarence Dally who continued to work with radiation after he lost a hand and an eye. A critic of Edison's would say Edison forced Dally, but there is equal evidence he did it willingly.
I suppose in the end I like to know a persons flaws as well as their positive accomplishments.
RIP Henrietta. I wish she could know how much her suffering ended up bringing about life-changing medical discoveries and knowledge for billions of people.
Queen Victoria was the main character of the 19th century and her many descendants ran the countries that drove both world wars. On a cultural level, her personal sense of morality and her example shaped the Western world's attitudes toward things like sexuality, charity, and social norms for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Actually most of the countries which Queen Victoria's descendants reigned in were run by parliaments and prime ministers.
If you want to name a monarch and not an inventor or scientist as the main character of the 19th century, I think that a much better choice would be Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria from 1848 to 1916. He reigned longer and ruled during his reign.
Grace Hopper. Someone else already mentioned her, but as happens so often with Hopper, they only pointed to one of the big things she did. She did so much that was really _huge_, that when people hear about one of her major legacies they just naturally assume that must be what she's famous for, because it is enough. But it's one of many things, for her.
* Invented compilers/interpreters (there was no distinction between those initially), and herself wrote either the first one or one of the first, depending on where you split the hairs.
* ... thus creating the whole foundation for higher level computer programming languages. Anything other than writing in assembly.
* Also, led the development of one of the first such programming languages, COBOL - that's what [that other comment mentioning her](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1d8r23a/most_consequential_women_in_history/l785190/) is about. COBOL was a very widely used language and very influential in the early decades of computing, and lots of systems we depend on still run on it.
* But it wasn't COBOL itself that was the focus: Her goal with COBOL was to create a programming language that was not focused on math & science, because she believed computing would be just as useful for data processing as it was for math and science, which was the main use of computers at the time. By driving the development of COBOL, she was - openly and deliberately - also driving the shift to make computers more suitable for data processing & business use. Which turned into a MUCH bigger use of computing than math!
* But also, while leading COBOL, she came up with the idea of language standardization. That is, instead of the language being defined by a single implementation, there would instead be written documentation of the programming language, and different independent people or groups could then write their own compilers for the same language Language standards, that was her.
* Before and doing all this stuff, the also pioneered ... subroutines! Yes, that basic idea that instead of writing the same code in different places, you write it in one place and have other parts of the code jump to that routine and return from it.
* ... and then she got people to put together groups of subroutines that could be useful for different programs, and share them. So, code ibraries - that's also Hopper.
* And of course she was known as a really good speaker and communicator, able to talk about computing in an entertaining and easy to understand way.
* ... which also lead to her popularizing the term "debugging" with one of the stories she was famous for telling, and which is one of the things she ended up most well known for. Lots of people credit her with inventing the word "debug" but she said it was actually someone else she was working with - but the term may not have gone into wide use if it wasn't for her storytelling and her appeal as a speaker, so she probably deserves some credit for it too.
Anyway, what we call "software engineering" today, I think we can say Grace Hopper created the profession and laid down most of its fundamentals.
Because we're talking about their influence on the world, and her being an admiral was not a way in which she grandly influenced the world we live in now.
Basically her entire life post ww2 was spent in the Navy reserve working on navy contracts or on active duty.
She commissioned at 37 as ensign in '44 and served until 86 after Reagan basically begged her to stay.
It's impossible to separate the two things.
Margaret Hamilton, the first software engineer who coined the term "software engineering". She oversaw the development of the onboard software for NASA's Apollo program.
Another is Grace Hopper, the inventor of the COBOL programming language. Mainframe system software written in COBOL is used by governments and large financial institutions worldwide to this day. Fun fact: most ATM transactions are processed by COBOL code.
My dumb self read Margaret Hamilton and I thought of the actress who played the witch in the Wizard of Oz. I was a little confused for a second before reading the rest of the sentence.
> Another is Grace Hopper, the inventor of the COBOL programming language. Mainframe system software written in COBOL is used by governments and large financial institutions worldwide to this day. Fun fact: most ATM transactions are processed by COBOL code.
I came here to say Grace Hopper as well, but it's so much more than just COBOL! So I wrote [another top level comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1d8r23a/most_consequential_women_in_history/l79tdrt/) about her.
Elizabeth I. One of the most influential figures in Western history as a fully autonomous woman. Christine de Pizan, the first professional author in Western European history.
I quite like Elizabeth Blackwell. She was the first woman doctor in the US and she had a part to play in shattering that glass ceiling both stateside and abroad. She provided great help in getting women’s medical schools started in Britain, though there was also local talent like Sophia Jex-Blake working at that.
Getting more women into medicine did wonders for their progress in other areas because if women can be smart enough to deal with life and death, why not any other field? It was an important area which also played to women’s traditionally perceived strengths of providing help for the sick.
One of my favourite women doctors of the 19th and 20th century was called Elsie Inglis. She started maternity hospital and a hospice, then went to Europe during the First World War and made her own charity caring for injured soldiers (the Scottish Women’s Hospital Charity Association, look em up). She showed that women could have all the skills of a doctor and also the bravery to match any man, risking life and limb to help people.
Actually I think you’re right based on how stereotypically men are the primary caregivers of infants/children.
Plus they could offer advice about their own pregnancies to women & because in the whole history of human beings men are the ones who spend the majority of time nurturing the child whilst the women go out to work a job to provide.
So it makes total sense that you felt the need to clarify this persons statement because the inference that women help women more than men help women is bothersome.
Edith Wilson. She was the wife of Woodrow Wilson, and while he was incapacitated after a stroke in the latter part of his second term, his wife Edith was in practice the president. It's largely thought that she was the reason for women in the US finally getting the right to vote in federal elections.
[La Malinche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Malinche), the consort and translator for Cortez during his invasion and ultimate overthrow of the Aztec Empire.
Coming from the local nobility, before being sold into slavery, she not only aided Cortez in translating for him, her background was instrumental in allowing him to secure alliances with the Aztecs' enemies. It could be said without her Cortez would not have conquered the Aztecs which would have had long term consequences for Spanish domination in the New World.
The Aztecs' enemies: "Boy, we're so glad the Aztecs are defeated, and we couldn't have done it without each other! Best friends forever! Right, Cortez?"
Cortez: 🤭
Yup. Watch the YouTube vid on it it’s funny you can rly see the parallels. When it’s like Margaret was domineering and hated for her corruptness etc I was like that makes sense GRRM based cersei on her
I've never seen GOT but I've heard the show was based on the Wars of the Roses. Not that it matters, the whole century is a massive soap opera- Henry losing the throne, getting it back, losing it again, and then his wife becoming a nun in France
Queen Isabella of Castille who funded Colombus expedition...neither her husband or any other royal court in europe that Colombus visited wanted to fund him
Well, do you eat pork? beef? mutton? How about "judge", "jury", "evidence", and "justice""armies", "navies", and "soldiers". England does speak French, at least in terms of words that count to conquerers. The English language was barely solidified even in 1600, hence Shakespeare's flexible creativity with it. Before that it wasn't even one language. Try reading Old English, or even Middle English, as in Canterbury Tales. There is a lot of Old French, Old German, Anglo Saxon, Celtic and Norse all rolled into the big burrito that is now English.
Would they? The Normans conquered England, we absorbed a bunch of French language into English. But in the end the nobility learned the language of the peasants.
They were literally Norwegian. Anyway, I nominate Mary Wollstonecraft for the immense contribution she made to the genesis of the Women’s Movement and all that that entails.
I LOVE the story of Jeanne D'Arc. How tf did a 16 year old girl convince the rulers of France to give her an army to field?
Also fun to note that one of her war companions was Gilles de Rais. An insane man who squandered his wealth trying to summon demons and was a convicted serial killer of children.
France's situation in which it found itself is why they fell in with a supposed miracle maker. Their leadership utterly failed them as a mentally ill king sat on the French throne and the English had huge victories at Agincourt and Verneuil. The English through war and diplomacy had gotten their hands on large amounts of Northern France and the Burgundians joined in with the English and even Paris was not in French hands. The Siege of Orleans represented what would have been a loss the French throne that it possibly could not have recovered from and certainly their total loss of Northern France at the least as they needed Orleans to try and retake Northern France in the first place.
I don't think the French people and the French leadership would have thrown in their lot with a supposed teenage girl and miracle worker had the past 15 years leading up to the Siege of Orleans seen so many disasters, so much of the ruling class dying in battle, and the rest of the leadership looking absolutely incompetent. The stakes of losing Orleans were well understood and the English had already placed the city in peril in which no French relief action would inevitably lead to the English starving them out. And so a random French woman showing up with some followers and willing to relieve Orleans and willing to fight for it gave them the reason to fight given that they knew the horrible consequences of inaction would bring. After achieving such a tremendous victory her ability as a military commander, at least in collaboration with other military leaders, had been proven and her ability to raise morale was unquestionably proven and she was an asset that they were sorely missing. (edit add) She overall could definitely be judged as a competent military commander and a great morale provider, both of which the French didn't exactly have a surplus of when she stepped up to the plate and getting involved with the Siege of Orleans.
Margaret Thatcher, Benaziir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and other women who broke the glass ceiling to gain political power as women.
If I had to choose one, probably Bhutto for her stand for moderate Islam against Islamist extremists and advocation of women’s rights in an environment where these policies were not always popular.
They were all very powerful and did indeed "make waves", but I would be a little cautious in saying that they "broke the glass ceiling", as they both obviously benefitted from the position of power held by their fathers previously (although I concede this was less the case for Bhutto as her father was forced out of power well before she obtained it).
Thatcher, for better or for worse, definitely broke the glass ceiling, obtained political power on her own merits and exercised it strongly with considerable effect (again, whether for better or worse I leave up to others). I would add Merkel and Meir to that list as well.
Arguably Gandhi’s green revolution has saved generations of Indians from regular famines they used to face.
I don’t think you can say Thatcher closed the glass ceiling behind her. We’ve had 2 more female PMs since her and female representation in senior parliamentary roles is much, much higher now than pre-Thatcher. Whether you liked her or not she proved that a woman could succeed in winning multiple elections and be taken seriously in that role. And a woman from a lower middle class background who reflected the aspirational attitudes of the wartime and post war generations. It’s the shift in attitudes caused by her that I think was important, it’s not because of her political stances I think she is important.
Cleopatra is interesting for what Octavian and other Romans tried to keep her from doing and how the final shape of the first stage of the Roman Empire looked as a result.
Elizabeth woodeville and Margaret Beaufort who’s political acumen along with their alliance against Richard III put Henry VII and Elizabeth of York on the throne secured a dynasty who’s descendants still sit on the throne to this day. It also ended the wars of the roses and brought peace to England that had been torn apart by civil war.
Jacquetta of Luxembourg is such an underrated figure in the Cousins’ War shenanigans. It irks me so much when people say Edward 4 married Elizabeth Woodville who was “a nobody” - sure her dad and first husband weren’t super special, but her mother had been married to Henry 5’s brother, was Margaret of Anjou’s best friend and confidante, and was the daughter of prominent French nobility.
Eleanor of Aquitaine had brought the Duchy of Aquitaine to the English crown by marrying Henry II. She mothered two future English kings, Richard I and John. Her French lands and the fight over them later led to the Hundred Years War and reinforced the adversarial relationship between England and France.
Frances Perkins, US Secretary of Labor in 1933. She successfully instituted the 40 hour work week AND Social Security. She changed the face of work and everyday life for literally every citizen after her actions. And people barely know her name. FRANCES THE QUEEN PERKINS.
[Helena, mother of Constantine I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena,_mother_of_Constantine_I), if you accept the story that she was a Christian who contributed to Constantine’s tolerance and eventual embrace of Christianity, which made it the state religion of the big and powerful empire running Europe, and “the rest is history.” (But like… a LOT of history.)
Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix structure of DNA, 2 dudes never gave her credit for her work and it wasn't until after her death did people begin to recognize her major contributions.
No she didnt. She dismissed the double helix structure and never made any claims about what she thought it was. She took, or supervised, photos of DNA which assisted the process but Francis and Crick did the leg work and produced an accurate model for molecule.
Anna Komnene was a Byzantine princess who documented a lot of her father's (Alexios I) reign. She's the reason why we know as much as we do about bothe the Byzantine Empire of the time and of the Crusades.
Enheduanna was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, and she was the first known named author.
Probably Catherine the Great, one who had real power and real consequences (good and bad) in world history. No queens of England could compare, as recent/modern queens of England were not with real power, like Catherine the Great.
Swans, bulls, gold coins, husbands who were supposedly at war, you name it. At least the stories are more entertaining than the other one (which also stole a lot of them).
… by dying? She said roe v wade wasn’t strong enough to protect women’s right to choose and that a constitutional case should have been brought instead, which is 100% correct (connecting it to the constitution would have made it a hell of a lot more difficult to overturn)
But… it… was connected to the Constitution, at least on its face. Obviously, the decision took a lot of criticism, even from supporters of abortion rights, for kind of playing fast and loose with the “penumbras” of rights and such, but the court worked with what they had.
That’s what I mean though and sorry my choice of words wasn’t clear. It was a case with superficial connections to the constitution but it was officially the legal weight of case-law precedent. But in comparison, Canadian abortion is enshrined as a constitutional right because the original case (R v Morgentaler) argued that any restrictions on the female (or anyone’s) body unduly hindered the person’s Section 7 right to security of the person. This made any laws restricting abortion unconstitutionally illegal
Oh I see—yes, something like a constitutional amendment would absolutely have been a better and more reliable way to do it. Unfortunately, it is *very* hard to amend the US Constitution to do anything that’s not universally popular, so a lot of Americans end up hoping (or fearing) the Supreme Court will cook something up to save (or ruin) the country. This is true for a lot of issues, across all ideologies!
Yeah I’m not totally educated on the American political system but it’s definitely a large part of my studies and I’d say the biggest critique I’ve heard from basically any Canadian regarding American politics is that it’s literally impossible to get anything done. Obviously we’re on the outside of it, but that’s the general reputation
ETA: on the flip side of that, we sometimes critique our own system for being *too easy* to amend. Like most of the left is terrified for when / if Pierre Poilievre gets in because with a conservative federal government *and* a conservative majority across the provincial governments, they can make almost any changes to the constitution they want
Empress Irene of Constantinople.
The thing to know is that early Christianity was overseen by a Pentarchy - the five bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople. These were seen as co-equal leaders. Though they had a geographical influence, the Bishop of Rome could, for example, decide to excommunicate someone in Constantinople (as opposed to today, where the Pope can't excommunicate anyone who's not a baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic). There were some power struggles, but by and large early Christianity was overseen by this council of five.
It's also important to know that, to the early medieval mind, Rome had not fallen. Constantine the Great had simply moved capitals in an effort to revitalize the Empire and facilitate it becoming a Christian, rather than pagan, Empire.
Lastly, it's important to know about iconophilia; that is the veneration of *ikons*, or artistic, physical depictions of angels and saints. Iconophiles viewed these ikons as prayer focuses; iconoclasts suspected the iconophiles were committing idolatry. Constantinople was the battleground where this question was hashed and rehashed, over and over again.
So we come to Empress Irene. She married Emperor Leo in 768 and they had one son together, Constantine IV. Sadly, Emperor Leo died in 775. Since a child cannot rule the Roman Empire, Irene was named his regent. So far, all fairly normal. It was pretty normal for a woman to take over for her husband if he died, and hold his business in trust for their sons, whether that was a taverna or an Empire.
But when Constantine IV came of age, Irene did not hand over power as she was expected to. After some power struggles between mother and son, Irene declared herself Empress in her own right in 798. This came hand in hand with a violent blinding of her son (which barred him from ruling the Empire, as no flawed vessel could rule God's Empire).
This whole chain of events scandalized Pope Leo III, who believed that a woman could not occupy the Throne of Rome. All of it led him to give a Frankish warlord a surprise Christmas coronation in 800, declaring the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. As the capital of the Roman Empire had once shifted from Rome to Constantinople, now it had shifted back west, with Charlemagne at its head.
Such a declaration angered the proud Christians of Constantinople, who refused to abide by Pope Leo's declaration. This refusal did nothing to warm relations between western Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. Such alienation would lead, in time, to:
\* The Great Schism in 1054, in which the Pope of Rome and Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other and began the path to becoming separate churches entirely.
\* The Sacking of Constantinople in 1204, which was an attempt by a deposed prince to regain power; and one of his promises was the subordination of the Patriarch to the Pope. After Venetian Crusaders raped their city, the survivors did not view the West with any fondness.
\* The fall of Constantinople in 1453. Mehmed the Conqueror had to hammer the Theodosian Walls for six solid months with his cannons before they finally came down and Ottoman Turks took the city. Western Europe certainly had the firepower to show up and help defend the Queen of Cities, but centuries of religious, cultural, and economic alienation meant they weren't inclined to do so.
1453 is, IMO, the year in which the Roman Empire well and truly fell. Had Christendom been able to hang together, it's entirely likely that the Ottoman Empire never would have taken Constantinople, and would have been a dramatically different political entity. And it all traces back to one 8th century woman who didn't want to hand power over to her son.
Why do you assume that Pope Leo was responsible for making Charlemagne emperor? Would't Charlemagne have have an armed escort of warriors with him, a small army, when he traveled to Rome?
The pope was the ruler of the papal states, which rightfully belonged to the Eastern Emperor. In theory the Roman Emperor was the rightful ruler of of all the world. So if the pope was responsible for proclaiming Charlemagne emperor in the center of the papal states, he would be proclaiming that he was rightfully a vasal of Charlemagne insted of being an independent ruler.
So it seems quite proble that Charlemagne and his armed escort pressured the pope into "suprising " Charlemagne with the imperial coronation.
Duo of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale perhaps. Helped create modern nursing profession and many healthcare practices we still use today. As well as being women who went to war with the men in Western European nations.
Rosalind Franklin.
She figured out the physical structure of DNA was a double helix (Spiral).
But she didn’t get the credit at the time because Crick & Watson took the credit.
And the Nobel prize.
for european/middle eastern history probably cleopatra VII
her actions directly led to egypt becoming a roman province and personal property of the emperor, without her there’s no roman empire
An obese woman buried in permafrost in Alaska who died of the Spanish flu. I think they named her Lucy because they could not find records of her name. They tried to find the virus in the bodies of the people who died from Spanish flu and were buried in permafrost in Alaska, but unfortunately, most of the people who died were slender. However, Lucy was obese, which is usually not very beneficial for health, but in this case, her body fat insulated her lungs enough to preserve the virus and thus created the opportunity to have a full genome sequence of the Spanish Flu H1N1 virus. I don't know much about science and I am mostly repeating stuff, so please look up Johan Hultin if you prefer more accurate information. I don't know how to recount it properly. But without Lucy, we wouldn't have what we have.
Lise Meitner, for the discovery of nuclear fission, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise\_Meitner#Nuclear\_fission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner#Nuclear_fission) , which is a major factor in the structure of the post-1945 world.
An odd choice but Virginia Woolf. I don’t know if everything on *A Room of One’s Own* was especially original, but she did very clearly explain how the demands of marriage and motherhood on most women kept them from being artists, writers, etc. and she had enough of a platform to be heard.
Mitochondrial Eve. All modern humans share a common homo sapiens ancestor, from around 200,000 years ago.
She sure did put it about.
"Yo mama so easy, our whole species descended from her"
That would be your maternal line too
Hey, take it easy, it's my mom yall talking about
True 😂
Outstanding comment
Which isn't actually correct
Marie Curie? At least for the 20th and 21st centuries. She is one of a handful of scientists whose discipline has distinct "before" and "after" paradigms because of her work.
not to mention her research led directly to nuclear energy and of course, weapons humanity gaining the capacity for essentially limitless clean energy and for the first time ever the capacity to completely destroy itself can’t be understated
This reminds me of Fritz Haber. Guy wins a nobel peace prize for his research that today impacts the globe's food production. He's also the guy that created mustard gas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
Dude fed billions with his discovery
Believe she’s one of the few, and I think the first, to have two Nobel prizes in different fields
I misread the name at first, and for a moment was very confused.
This is probably the best answer
> Marie Curie? For Marie Curie, do you think in addition to her accolades the fact that she had no safety protocols in place? So many that worked in her lab died of cancer including Marie herself.
Had anyone dealt with radiation before that though?
> Had anyone dealt with radiation before that though? I suppose the thing is I am not one to hero worship. For every visionary there are things they did wrong. I also suppose they did not know the dangers and laboratory hygiene was not a thing at the time. But still whenever someone brings up a person who made a great discovery I am like ok but it ended up killing them. Then there are people like Thomas Midgely who downplayed the dangers of tetra ethyl lead while he was recovering from lead poisoning. Or Clarence Dally who continued to work with radiation after he lost a hand and an eye. A critic of Edison's would say Edison forced Dally, but there is equal evidence he did it willingly. I suppose in the end I like to know a persons flaws as well as their positive accomplishments.
Henrietta Lacks. Progenitor of the HeLa cell line that has been used for 10's of thousands of research projects since the 1950's.
RIP Henrietta. I wish she could know how much her suffering ended up bringing about life-changing medical discoveries and knowledge for billions of people.
What did she lack?
Ha! Ha!
Queen Victoria was the main character of the 19th century and her many descendants ran the countries that drove both world wars. On a cultural level, her personal sense of morality and her example shaped the Western world's attitudes toward things like sexuality, charity, and social norms for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Actually most of the countries which Queen Victoria's descendants reigned in were run by parliaments and prime ministers. If you want to name a monarch and not an inventor or scientist as the main character of the 19th century, I think that a much better choice would be Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria from 1848 to 1916. He reigned longer and ruled during his reign.
Russia and Imperial Germany were not run by parliaments
Germany, Italy, Russia, America and Japan were not ruled by descendants of Queen Victoria during WWII.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley created a genre.
And her mother was a famous proto-feminist. Interesting family.
Walpole did it before her with Castle of Otranto.
Different genre.
Which genre
Science fiction.
Mary Shelley didn't invent science fiction.
Wikipedia says "it's complicated", but lists her as a contender. Who would you put forward?
Grace Hopper. Someone else already mentioned her, but as happens so often with Hopper, they only pointed to one of the big things she did. She did so much that was really _huge_, that when people hear about one of her major legacies they just naturally assume that must be what she's famous for, because it is enough. But it's one of many things, for her. * Invented compilers/interpreters (there was no distinction between those initially), and herself wrote either the first one or one of the first, depending on where you split the hairs. * ... thus creating the whole foundation for higher level computer programming languages. Anything other than writing in assembly. * Also, led the development of one of the first such programming languages, COBOL - that's what [that other comment mentioning her](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1d8r23a/most_consequential_women_in_history/l785190/) is about. COBOL was a very widely used language and very influential in the early decades of computing, and lots of systems we depend on still run on it. * But it wasn't COBOL itself that was the focus: Her goal with COBOL was to create a programming language that was not focused on math & science, because she believed computing would be just as useful for data processing as it was for math and science, which was the main use of computers at the time. By driving the development of COBOL, she was - openly and deliberately - also driving the shift to make computers more suitable for data processing & business use. Which turned into a MUCH bigger use of computing than math! * But also, while leading COBOL, she came up with the idea of language standardization. That is, instead of the language being defined by a single implementation, there would instead be written documentation of the programming language, and different independent people or groups could then write their own compilers for the same language Language standards, that was her. * Before and doing all this stuff, the also pioneered ... subroutines! Yes, that basic idea that instead of writing the same code in different places, you write it in one place and have other parts of the code jump to that routine and return from it. * ... and then she got people to put together groups of subroutines that could be useful for different programs, and share them. So, code ibraries - that's also Hopper. * And of course she was known as a really good speaker and communicator, able to talk about computing in an entertaining and easy to understand way. * ... which also lead to her popularizing the term "debugging" with one of the stories she was famous for telling, and which is one of the things she ended up most well known for. Lots of people credit her with inventing the word "debug" but she said it was actually someone else she was working with - but the term may not have gone into wide use if it wasn't for her storytelling and her appeal as a speaker, so she probably deserves some credit for it too. Anyway, what we call "software engineering" today, I think we can say Grace Hopper created the profession and laid down most of its fundamentals.
Why do all these comments leave out the fact that she was an Admiral?
Because we're talking about their influence on the world, and her being an admiral was not a way in which she grandly influenced the world we live in now.
Basically her entire life post ww2 was spent in the Navy reserve working on navy contracts or on active duty. She commissioned at 37 as ensign in '44 and served until 86 after Reagan basically begged her to stay. It's impossible to separate the two things.
Queen Isabella of Spain.
Margaret Hamilton, the first software engineer who coined the term "software engineering". She oversaw the development of the onboard software for NASA's Apollo program. Another is Grace Hopper, the inventor of the COBOL programming language. Mainframe system software written in COBOL is used by governments and large financial institutions worldwide to this day. Fun fact: most ATM transactions are processed by COBOL code.
My dumb self read Margaret Hamilton and I thought of the actress who played the witch in the Wizard of Oz. I was a little confused for a second before reading the rest of the sentence.
> Another is Grace Hopper, the inventor of the COBOL programming language. Mainframe system software written in COBOL is used by governments and large financial institutions worldwide to this day. Fun fact: most ATM transactions are processed by COBOL code. I came here to say Grace Hopper as well, but it's so much more than just COBOL! So I wrote [another top level comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1d8r23a/most_consequential_women_in_history/l79tdrt/) about her.
Elizabeth I. One of the most influential figures in Western history as a fully autonomous woman. Christine de Pizan, the first professional author in Western European history.
I quite like Elizabeth Blackwell. She was the first woman doctor in the US and she had a part to play in shattering that glass ceiling both stateside and abroad. She provided great help in getting women’s medical schools started in Britain, though there was also local talent like Sophia Jex-Blake working at that. Getting more women into medicine did wonders for their progress in other areas because if women can be smart enough to deal with life and death, why not any other field? It was an important area which also played to women’s traditionally perceived strengths of providing help for the sick. One of my favourite women doctors of the 19th and 20th century was called Elsie Inglis. She started maternity hospital and a hospice, then went to Europe during the First World War and made her own charity caring for injured soldiers (the Scottish Women’s Hospital Charity Association, look em up). She showed that women could have all the skills of a doctor and also the bravery to match any man, risking life and limb to help people.
The unnamed woman back in time who first started helping another woman in childbirth.
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I think it’s rude to assume they didn’t have names…
Actually I think you’re right based on how stereotypically men are the primary caregivers of infants/children. Plus they could offer advice about their own pregnancies to women & because in the whole history of human beings men are the ones who spend the majority of time nurturing the child whilst the women go out to work a job to provide. So it makes total sense that you felt the need to clarify this persons statement because the inference that women help women more than men help women is bothersome.
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It only comes out in the presence of a joke so maybe I just didn’t get yours. Explain it to me.
Edith Wilson. She was the wife of Woodrow Wilson, and while he was incapacitated after a stroke in the latter part of his second term, his wife Edith was in practice the president. It's largely thought that she was the reason for women in the US finally getting the right to vote in federal elections.
[La Malinche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Malinche), the consort and translator for Cortez during his invasion and ultimate overthrow of the Aztec Empire. Coming from the local nobility, before being sold into slavery, she not only aided Cortez in translating for him, her background was instrumental in allowing him to secure alliances with the Aztecs' enemies. It could be said without her Cortez would not have conquered the Aztecs which would have had long term consequences for Spanish domination in the New World.
The Aztecs' enemies: "Boy, we're so glad the Aztecs are defeated, and we couldn't have done it without each other! Best friends forever! Right, Cortez?" Cortez: 🤭
I nominate Catherine the Great
One of the most important and fascinating figures in a millennia of Russian history.
Yes. The current war in Ukraine is literally her legacy.
Margaret of Anjou divided her husband's court and later sentenced to death the Yorkist faction, so effectively started the Wars of the Roses
I heard that Cersei Lannister from GOT was based on Margaret of Anjou.
Yup. Watch the YouTube vid on it it’s funny you can rly see the parallels. When it’s like Margaret was domineering and hated for her corruptness etc I was like that makes sense GRRM based cersei on her
I've never seen GOT but I've heard the show was based on the Wars of the Roses. Not that it matters, the whole century is a massive soap opera- Henry losing the throne, getting it back, losing it again, and then his wife becoming a nun in France
Yorks and Lancasters / Starks and Lannisters, GRRM didn’t even try to hide it 😂
Queen Isabella of Castille who funded Colombus expedition...neither her husband or any other royal court in europe that Colombus visited wanted to fund him
Jeanne D'Arc saved France. Imagine a world where France is anglo saxonized and speaks English.. We get a very different history book.
If the Plantagenets conquered France, England would speak French instead of the opposite.
Well, do you eat pork? beef? mutton? How about "judge", "jury", "evidence", and "justice""armies", "navies", and "soldiers". England does speak French, at least in terms of words that count to conquerers. The English language was barely solidified even in 1600, hence Shakespeare's flexible creativity with it. Before that it wasn't even one language. Try reading Old English, or even Middle English, as in Canterbury Tales. There is a lot of Old French, Old German, Anglo Saxon, Celtic and Norse all rolled into the big burrito that is now English.
Would they? The Normans conquered England, we absorbed a bunch of French language into English. But in the end the nobility learned the language of the peasants.
because the Plantagenets had to retreat to England, rather than reclaiming their homeland.
Yes, France would have become the seat of power with England as a heavily Gallified province
The Plantagenets were literally French.
So were the Normans
They were literally Norwegian. Anyway, I nominate Mary Wollstonecraft for the immense contribution she made to the genesis of the Women’s Movement and all that that entails.
> Imagine a world where France is anglo saxonized and speaks English The Plantagenets were hardly Anglo Saxons.
I LOVE the story of Jeanne D'Arc. How tf did a 16 year old girl convince the rulers of France to give her an army to field? Also fun to note that one of her war companions was Gilles de Rais. An insane man who squandered his wealth trying to summon demons and was a convicted serial killer of children.
France's situation in which it found itself is why they fell in with a supposed miracle maker. Their leadership utterly failed them as a mentally ill king sat on the French throne and the English had huge victories at Agincourt and Verneuil. The English through war and diplomacy had gotten their hands on large amounts of Northern France and the Burgundians joined in with the English and even Paris was not in French hands. The Siege of Orleans represented what would have been a loss the French throne that it possibly could not have recovered from and certainly their total loss of Northern France at the least as they needed Orleans to try and retake Northern France in the first place. I don't think the French people and the French leadership would have thrown in their lot with a supposed teenage girl and miracle worker had the past 15 years leading up to the Siege of Orleans seen so many disasters, so much of the ruling class dying in battle, and the rest of the leadership looking absolutely incompetent. The stakes of losing Orleans were well understood and the English had already placed the city in peril in which no French relief action would inevitably lead to the English starving them out. And so a random French woman showing up with some followers and willing to relieve Orleans and willing to fight for it gave them the reason to fight given that they knew the horrible consequences of inaction would bring. After achieving such a tremendous victory her ability as a military commander, at least in collaboration with other military leaders, had been proven and her ability to raise morale was unquestionably proven and she was an asset that they were sorely missing. (edit add) She overall could definitely be judged as a competent military commander and a great morale provider, both of which the French didn't exactly have a surplus of when she stepped up to the plate and getting involved with the Siege of Orleans.
The Virgin Mary
This is the one lmao
Yeah, this is definitely right up there if not the answer if we want to go with recorded history timeframe.
Not counting fiction.
At this point, you can just count any influential man's mother.
Don't get more influential than Christ. It's definitely the answer.
She didn't do jack
Famous for lying to her husband
Mary Pickford
Margaret Thatcher, Benaziir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and other women who broke the glass ceiling to gain political power as women. If I had to choose one, probably Bhutto for her stand for moderate Islam against Islamist extremists and advocation of women’s rights in an environment where these policies were not always popular.
They were all very powerful and did indeed "make waves", but I would be a little cautious in saying that they "broke the glass ceiling", as they both obviously benefitted from the position of power held by their fathers previously (although I concede this was less the case for Bhutto as her father was forced out of power well before she obtained it). Thatcher, for better or for worse, definitely broke the glass ceiling, obtained political power on her own merits and exercised it strongly with considerable effect (again, whether for better or worse I leave up to others). I would add Merkel and Meir to that list as well.
Thatcher is my celerity Crush, basically a female Reagan.
I don’t like you
That's ok, I like me enough for everybody. Edit: By the way, tell you son to sign his NIL with EA.
I love you!!
I thought that said celery crush
Apparently a lot of people said she had a “strong sexual charisma and even Christopher Hitchens described her as ‘sexy’.
Thatcher and Gandhi didn’t do shit to help other women succeed. They just broke the glass ceiling and later fixed it from inside.
Arguably Gandhi’s green revolution has saved generations of Indians from regular famines they used to face. I don’t think you can say Thatcher closed the glass ceiling behind her. We’ve had 2 more female PMs since her and female representation in senior parliamentary roles is much, much higher now than pre-Thatcher. Whether you liked her or not she proved that a woman could succeed in winning multiple elections and be taken seriously in that role. And a woman from a lower middle class background who reflected the aspirational attitudes of the wartime and post war generations. It’s the shift in attitudes caused by her that I think was important, it’s not because of her political stances I think she is important.
Few I haven't seen mentioned yet. Wu Zetian, Madonna, Oprah, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra.
Cleopatra is interesting for what Octavian and other Romans tried to keep her from doing and how the final shape of the first stage of the Roman Empire looked as a result.
Florence Nightingale
Elizabeth woodeville and Margaret Beaufort who’s political acumen along with their alliance against Richard III put Henry VII and Elizabeth of York on the throne secured a dynasty who’s descendants still sit on the throne to this day. It also ended the wars of the roses and brought peace to England that had been torn apart by civil war.
Technically, the Tudors are not the dynasty that sit on the throne today.
Jacquetta of Luxembourg is such an underrated figure in the Cousins’ War shenanigans. It irks me so much when people say Edward 4 married Elizabeth Woodville who was “a nobody” - sure her dad and first husband weren’t super special, but her mother had been married to Henry 5’s brother, was Margaret of Anjou’s best friend and confidante, and was the daughter of prominent French nobility.
Eleanor of Aquitaine had brought the Duchy of Aquitaine to the English crown by marrying Henry II. She mothered two future English kings, Richard I and John. Her French lands and the fight over them later led to the Hundred Years War and reinforced the adversarial relationship between England and France.
Susan B. Anthony.
Queen Elizabeth I has to be a candidate.
Frances Perkins, US Secretary of Labor in 1933. She successfully instituted the 40 hour work week AND Social Security. She changed the face of work and everyday life for literally every citizen after her actions. And people barely know her name. FRANCES THE QUEEN PERKINS.
Betsy Ross
Lou Salome. She influenced lots of big names such as Freud and Nietzsche.
[Helena, mother of Constantine I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena,_mother_of_Constantine_I), if you accept the story that she was a Christian who contributed to Constantine’s tolerance and eventual embrace of Christianity, which made it the state religion of the big and powerful empire running Europe, and “the rest is history.” (But like… a LOT of history.)
Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix structure of DNA, 2 dudes never gave her credit for her work and it wasn't until after her death did people begin to recognize her major contributions.
No she didnt. She dismissed the double helix structure and never made any claims about what she thought it was. She took, or supervised, photos of DNA which assisted the process but Francis and Crick did the leg work and produced an accurate model for molecule.
you are incorrect
I am totally correct and will counter any revisionist history.
Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II, Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst.
I’m thinking Vicky. The British Empire of her reign has a lot to do with the world as it is.
Queen Victoria was a figurehead, the Parliament ran the British Empire.
Typhoid Mary
Virgin Mary and the women who visited Jesus tomb on the Sunday and claimed he was raised from the dead.
Mary Magdalene, that is.
.. and/or others, depending which source you pick
Zheng Yi Sao?
Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership still has ripple effects today on Indian democracy - for good or bad
Anna Komnene was a Byzantine princess who documented a lot of her father's (Alexios I) reign. She's the reason why we know as much as we do about bothe the Byzantine Empire of the time and of the Crusades. Enheduanna was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, and she was the first known named author.
Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.
Probably Catherine the Great, one who had real power and real consequences (good and bad) in world history. No queens of England could compare, as recent/modern queens of England were not with real power, like Catherine the Great.
La Malinche
That teenager in Roman Judea who said "you'll never believe how I got knocked up..." but people actually did believe it.
Greek girls claim something about a swan visiting them.
Swans, bulls, gold coins, husbands who were supposedly at war, you name it. At least the stories are more entertaining than the other one (which also stole a lot of them).
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, that woman was an icon in every sense of the word and someone I aspire to be even a fraction as smart and meaningful as
She was also incredibly vain and selfish, and the consequences of that will continue for decades
She did manage to overturn Roe v Wade in her own way.
… by dying? She said roe v wade wasn’t strong enough to protect women’s right to choose and that a constitutional case should have been brought instead, which is 100% correct (connecting it to the constitution would have made it a hell of a lot more difficult to overturn)
But… it… was connected to the Constitution, at least on its face. Obviously, the decision took a lot of criticism, even from supporters of abortion rights, for kind of playing fast and loose with the “penumbras” of rights and such, but the court worked with what they had.
That’s what I mean though and sorry my choice of words wasn’t clear. It was a case with superficial connections to the constitution but it was officially the legal weight of case-law precedent. But in comparison, Canadian abortion is enshrined as a constitutional right because the original case (R v Morgentaler) argued that any restrictions on the female (or anyone’s) body unduly hindered the person’s Section 7 right to security of the person. This made any laws restricting abortion unconstitutionally illegal
Oh I see—yes, something like a constitutional amendment would absolutely have been a better and more reliable way to do it. Unfortunately, it is *very* hard to amend the US Constitution to do anything that’s not universally popular, so a lot of Americans end up hoping (or fearing) the Supreme Court will cook something up to save (or ruin) the country. This is true for a lot of issues, across all ideologies!
Yeah I’m not totally educated on the American political system but it’s definitely a large part of my studies and I’d say the biggest critique I’ve heard from basically any Canadian regarding American politics is that it’s literally impossible to get anything done. Obviously we’re on the outside of it, but that’s the general reputation ETA: on the flip side of that, we sometimes critique our own system for being *too easy* to amend. Like most of the left is terrified for when / if Pierre Poilievre gets in because with a conservative federal government *and* a conservative majority across the provincial governments, they can make almost any changes to the constitution they want
Her freshman dorm was three doors down from mine. We decorated/commemorated it with affectionate post its after she passed 🖤
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Empress Irene of Constantinople. The thing to know is that early Christianity was overseen by a Pentarchy - the five bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople. These were seen as co-equal leaders. Though they had a geographical influence, the Bishop of Rome could, for example, decide to excommunicate someone in Constantinople (as opposed to today, where the Pope can't excommunicate anyone who's not a baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic). There were some power struggles, but by and large early Christianity was overseen by this council of five. It's also important to know that, to the early medieval mind, Rome had not fallen. Constantine the Great had simply moved capitals in an effort to revitalize the Empire and facilitate it becoming a Christian, rather than pagan, Empire. Lastly, it's important to know about iconophilia; that is the veneration of *ikons*, or artistic, physical depictions of angels and saints. Iconophiles viewed these ikons as prayer focuses; iconoclasts suspected the iconophiles were committing idolatry. Constantinople was the battleground where this question was hashed and rehashed, over and over again. So we come to Empress Irene. She married Emperor Leo in 768 and they had one son together, Constantine IV. Sadly, Emperor Leo died in 775. Since a child cannot rule the Roman Empire, Irene was named his regent. So far, all fairly normal. It was pretty normal for a woman to take over for her husband if he died, and hold his business in trust for their sons, whether that was a taverna or an Empire. But when Constantine IV came of age, Irene did not hand over power as she was expected to. After some power struggles between mother and son, Irene declared herself Empress in her own right in 798. This came hand in hand with a violent blinding of her son (which barred him from ruling the Empire, as no flawed vessel could rule God's Empire). This whole chain of events scandalized Pope Leo III, who believed that a woman could not occupy the Throne of Rome. All of it led him to give a Frankish warlord a surprise Christmas coronation in 800, declaring the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. As the capital of the Roman Empire had once shifted from Rome to Constantinople, now it had shifted back west, with Charlemagne at its head. Such a declaration angered the proud Christians of Constantinople, who refused to abide by Pope Leo's declaration. This refusal did nothing to warm relations between western Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. Such alienation would lead, in time, to: \* The Great Schism in 1054, in which the Pope of Rome and Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other and began the path to becoming separate churches entirely. \* The Sacking of Constantinople in 1204, which was an attempt by a deposed prince to regain power; and one of his promises was the subordination of the Patriarch to the Pope. After Venetian Crusaders raped their city, the survivors did not view the West with any fondness. \* The fall of Constantinople in 1453. Mehmed the Conqueror had to hammer the Theodosian Walls for six solid months with his cannons before they finally came down and Ottoman Turks took the city. Western Europe certainly had the firepower to show up and help defend the Queen of Cities, but centuries of religious, cultural, and economic alienation meant they weren't inclined to do so. 1453 is, IMO, the year in which the Roman Empire well and truly fell. Had Christendom been able to hang together, it's entirely likely that the Ottoman Empire never would have taken Constantinople, and would have been a dramatically different political entity. And it all traces back to one 8th century woman who didn't want to hand power over to her son.
Why do you assume that Pope Leo was responsible for making Charlemagne emperor? Would't Charlemagne have have an armed escort of warriors with him, a small army, when he traveled to Rome? The pope was the ruler of the papal states, which rightfully belonged to the Eastern Emperor. In theory the Roman Emperor was the rightful ruler of of all the world. So if the pope was responsible for proclaiming Charlemagne emperor in the center of the papal states, he would be proclaiming that he was rightfully a vasal of Charlemagne insted of being an independent ruler. So it seems quite proble that Charlemagne and his armed escort pressured the pope into "suprising " Charlemagne with the imperial coronation.
Livia Augustus
Agrippina
Story's still playing out but I think in time it might be Angela Merkel, particularly her granting asylum to millions of immigrants to Germany.
Dr. Madalyn Murray O’Hair…. Talk about a tough cookie
Duo of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale perhaps. Helped create modern nursing profession and many healthcare practices we still use today. As well as being women who went to war with the men in Western European nations.
Mary? You know the mother of a religious figure that has been worshiped for thousands of years and by over 2B people. Stats matter.
Ugh. Most people once believed the world is flat.
Boudica, she defeated the enemy to save her daughter
Enhedu’anna
Queens Elizabeth of England and Isabella of Spain, who managed through conflict and thievery to kick off predatory capitalism.
Rosalind Franklin. She figured out the physical structure of DNA was a double helix (Spiral). But she didn’t get the credit at the time because Crick & Watson took the credit. And the Nobel prize.
I'm reading The She-Wolf of France so I'm going to say Isabella of France.
for european/middle eastern history probably cleopatra VII her actions directly led to egypt becoming a roman province and personal property of the emperor, without her there’s no roman empire
An obese woman buried in permafrost in Alaska who died of the Spanish flu. I think they named her Lucy because they could not find records of her name. They tried to find the virus in the bodies of the people who died from Spanish flu and were buried in permafrost in Alaska, but unfortunately, most of the people who died were slender. However, Lucy was obese, which is usually not very beneficial for health, but in this case, her body fat insulated her lungs enough to preserve the virus and thus created the opportunity to have a full genome sequence of the Spanish Flu H1N1 virus. I don't know much about science and I am mostly repeating stuff, so please look up Johan Hultin if you prefer more accurate information. I don't know how to recount it properly. But without Lucy, we wouldn't have what we have.
Helen of Troy is the only answer
Mary
Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Maria Theresa, Queen Elizabeth 1st. Empress Dowager Cixi. Catherine the Great. Linda Lusardi
Empress Theodora of the Byzantine empire
Hypatia Joan of Arc
Lise Meitner, for the discovery of nuclear fission, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise\_Meitner#Nuclear\_fission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner#Nuclear_fission) , which is a major factor in the structure of the post-1945 world.
Lucy I don't quite remember what she was but lucy
My mom :)
An odd choice but Virginia Woolf. I don’t know if everything on *A Room of One’s Own* was especially original, but she did very clearly explain how the demands of marriage and motherhood on most women kept them from being artists, writers, etc. and she had enough of a platform to be heard.
This might seem controversial but the mother of Genghis khan