Tales of History and Heroines
Rita Levi- Montalcini (1909 - 2012)
Rita was a Jewish, Italian Neurobiologist. She became the oldest Nobel Laureate. She trained to be a doctor specialising in neurology in 1936 and stayed at the University as an assistant in neurohistology. This was cut short in 1938 as Mussolini’s Manifesto of Race prevented her, as a Jew, from any professional career. She practised her experiments into nerve fibre growth at home despite fleeing the Nazi invasion in 1943. In 1946 she was granted a one semester research at Washington University in St. Louis where she replicated the results of experiments conducted at home. She was offered a research associate position that she held for 30 years. She discovered here her most important work isolating nerve growth cells from cancerous tissues. Her discovery in 1952 offered possible treatments for such things as Alzheimers, cancer and infertility. She was finally made a full professor in 1958, and was awarded a joint nobel prize in 1986.She founded the European Brain Research Institute in 2002. Rita had an amazing lust for life and work and continued conducting research everyday up until her death aged 103. |
Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852)
Ada worked on Charles Babbage’s early general purpose computer and is regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. Ada was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron who deserted her apparently in disgust upon discovering she was female! She had a sickly childhood with little love expressed from her mother, she was cared for by her maternal grandmother. Because of her father’s desertion she was forbidden from studying the arts and was taught science, logic and mathematics from an early age and was deemed by all to have a brilliant mind. Ada died of uterine cancer at the tender age of 36, a brilliant passion for technology and science paved the way for so many others after her. |
Oseola McCarty (1908 - 1999)
Oseola was born of a rape, and she had a hard and difficult start in life. She became a washerwoman and cleaner living in Mississippi. She lived a frugal life and worked hard at the job which she loved until the age of 86 when she finally retired. Before she died she established a trust to the University of Southern Mississippi amounting to a phenomenal $150,000. The money was to be specifically used to give bursaries to students (mainly of African American descent) who would otherwise not been financially able to have a college education (like herself). "My only regret is that I didn't have more to give. |
Karen Harrison (1960 - 2011)
Karen was the first female train driver in the UK, a milestone almost unbelievably as late as 1978. It’s well documented that she suffered ten years of physical and verbal harassment from other colleagues and managers who disapproved of her incursion into their male environment. She wasn’t known to let this hold her back and stood out from the crowd in her determination, her occasional pink hair and her punk stylings. After moving to a different London depot Karen flourished in the next 10 years of her career and rose rapidly up the ranks of ASLEF, being consistently the first woman to hold various roles within the association. In 1985 she presided over the ASLEF annual conference and was active in politics and Trade Unions. Sadly meningitis ended her career as a driver shortly after. She went on to study law at Oxford University as a mature student but died from cancer before completing the degree. Still to this day she represents success in an area that it not known for its diversity, and she is still largely unrecognised for her achievements. |
Maggie Walker (1864 - 1934)
Maggie was born an illegitimate daughter of a slave, she became a teacher and a business woman. She was also the first woman to found a bank. As an African-American community leader she was tremendously important in making tangible improvements within her community. She devoted her life to narrowing the gap between the races in America. When she was 14 Maggie joined the council of the Order of St Luke, it ministered to the sick, promoted humanitarian causes and encouraged self help and integrity. She remained a member (and indeed grand secretary from 1899) until her death. In 1902 she founded a newspaper for the order and shortly afterwards a Penny Savings Bank. She even managed to keep the bank going through the great depression enabling African-American citizens to have mortgages - something unavailable to them from other banks. |
Tove Jansson (1914 - 2001)
Tove Jansson is mainly famous as the creator of the Moomins. This was just one aspect of her life however and throughout her life she worked as a cartoonist, novelist and artist, indeed she wrote and illustrated her first book when she was 14. Tove spent almost 30 years living with her partner Tuulikki the remote island of Klovharu. It is this that I feel perhaps gave her writing the qualities I so admire. Her writing is beautiful - gentle, closely observed, in tune with natures rhythms. It is like a great painting, saying so much with so few brushstrokes. |
Karen Harrison (1960 - 2011)
Karen was the first female train driver in the UK, a milestone almost unbelievably as late as 1978. It’s well documented that she suffered ten years of physical and verbal harassment from other colleagues and managers who disapproved of her incursion into their male environment. She wasn’t known to let this hold her back and stood out from the crowd in her determination, her occasional pink hair and her punk stylings. After moving to a different London depot Karen flourished in the next 10 years of her career and rose rapidly up the ranks of ASLEF, being consistently the first woman to hold various roles within the association. In 1985 she presided over the ASLEF annual conference and was active in politics and Trade Unions. Sadly meningitis ended her career as a driver shortly after. She went on to study law at Oxford University as a mature student but died from cancer before completing the degree. Still to this day she represents success in an area that it not known for its diversity, and she is still largely unrecognised for her achievements. |
Aleen Cust (1868 - 1937)
Aleen was Britain’s first female vet. She was by all accounts an amazing woman. She said that she always wanted to be a vet, but as a woman at this time she was barred from this possibility. She fought hard to eventually (1878) study at New Veterinary College Edinburgh although under a pseudonym so as to not bring shame on her family. Although completing and coming top in all her studies she was denied permission to take her final exams in 1897. Despite this she went on to practise in her native Ireland with the highest recommendation from the college principal. In 1904 she was briefly engaged but upon objections from his family to her career the wedding was called off. In 1922 after the removal of the Sex Disqualification Act (1919) she eventually gained her formal qualification from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. |
Lilian Lindsay (1871 - 1960)
Lilian was the first qualified UK woman dentist. She also became the first female president of the British Dental Association (1946) and conducted specialised research into the history of dentistry. It is sometimes hard to believe what some of these women went through in order to pursue the career they wanted. Upon insisting she wanted to be a dentist at school she promptly lost her scholarship. When Lilian finally persuaded the head of the National School of Dentistry to give her an interview he was so worried she would be a distraction to the other (male) students she was interviewed on the street (reportedly to jeers from the students above). She was eventually accepted at Edinburgh Dental Hospital and School, but begrudgingly, with one member of staff remarking that “I’m afraid Madam you are taking the bread out of some poor fellows mouth.” She finally qualified in 1894 and became the first woman to join the British Dental Association in 1894. She became honorary librarian of the association and learnt several languages to aid her research. Inspirational and largely unrecognised. |
Agnes Nestor (1878 - 1948)
Agnes was an American glove maker, she worked a standard sixty hour week in a factory under difficult conditions with few rights and little pay. She became a women’s rights activist, politician unionist and social reformer. She was tremendously admired for her stalwart leadership qualities which were arguably in contrast to her delicate appearance. She founded the International Glove Workers Union, dramatically improving the rights of workers. She served as president of The Women’s Trade Union League and helped change many labour laws. She never retired working on causes in the women’s rights movement and social reform until her death. |
Gertrude Jekyll (1843- 1932)
I first came across Gertrude Jekyll as an amazing garden designer. She designed over 400 gardens in her lifetime, but that was far from her only achievement. She ran a prosperous nursery and bred plants well into her 80’s. She studied anatomy, botany at Kensington School of Art and was an accomplished artist. She had a rigorous practical and scientific approach to writing and over 1000 published articles in a range of subjects within her expertise, she also worked as an editor. Her garden design work was said to have made a lasting impact on architect Edwin Lutyens and they worked together for many years. |
Tabitha Babbitt (1779 - circa 1853)
Tabitha lived in a Shaker community in Massachusetts, USA. She was a spinner and weaver and stories tell that she observed men cutting wood with a pit saw and looking at her own spinning wheel saw how one man could operate a circular saw instead. She created a prototype and the design has hardly changed over the centuries. She is also credited with inventing machine cut nails and refining several other tools. As a Shaker she did this as part of her service to her community and didn’t apply for any patents for her inventions. Her original circular saw still resides in a museum in Albany. |
Grace Darling (1815 - 1842)
Grace was born in Northumberland and spent her childhood living on lighthouses where her father was the keeper. In 1838 aged 22 Grace had been unable to sleep and spotted a ship wrecked on the rocks, awakening her father Grace persuaded him to take their tiny boat out into the storm. They knew the tides and storms but they still took a tremendous risk and Grace’s mother Tomasin pleaded with them not to go. It was a rescue of tremendous bravery and strength. Even the lifeboat had been unable to reach the ship in the conditions. They found nine survivors (and two dead children) on the rocks and made two trips to ferry the survivors back to the safety of the lighthouse. After the rescue Grace found tremendous world wide fame, assisted and encouraged by the self appointed Robert Smeddle who acted as an agent and was part of the Bamburgh Castle Estate which governed the area and the lighthouse and Farne Islands. This was not something she was ever happy with and wanted only to remain at the lighthouse working quietly with her family. However there were constant visitors, suitors, press and attention and Grace soon found she had a full time job replying to letters and gifts and turning down public appearances. This constant pressure perhaps pressed her into a more reclusive life and she moved around relatives and friends searching for peace in the last few months before her death from Tuberculosis at the age of 27. |