Women are under-represented in the lists of great inventors, innovators and pioneers. How many can you name in this quiz?
1. Who was the first woman to be elected head of state in modern history?
2. Which pioneer of nursing was the first person to use pie charts and was the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society?
3. Which female mathematician is considered to be the world’s first computer programmer?
4. Who invented the modern life raft?
5. Which actress, described as the most beautiful woman in the world, developed a radio guidance system for torpedoes, the principles of which form the basis of Bluetooth technology?
6. Who was the first deaf and blind person to gain a Bachelor of Arts degree? As an author, campaigner and socialist she travelled the world and became an inspiration for the disabled and downtrodden.
7. Who is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in different sciences?
8. Which author of detective tales created Poirot and Miss Marple? She is credited in the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling novelist of all time.
9. Which admiral in the US Navy created the COBOL programming language?
10. Who invented the windscreen wiper?
11. Who was the first woman to fly in space and the only woman to complete a solo space mission?
12. Which chemistry graduate became the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
13. Who invented Kevlar?
14. Which media mogul became America’s first black multi-billionaire and greatest philanthropist? She has been ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
15. Which single mother on state benefits wrote the best selling book series in history?
Answers
1. Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1916-200) was the world’s first non-hereditary female head of government in modern history when she was elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960.
2. Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) became famous as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’ while treating wonded soldiers during the Crimean war. Her books and leaderhsip made her the founder of modern nursing. She is pictured above.
3. Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She worked with Charles Babbage on the first computer, the Analytical Engine, and published the first algorithm designed for the machine.
4. Maria Beasley was born in Philadelphia in 1847. She invented many things including a barrel-hooping machine which earned her over $20,000 a year. In 1880 she created a life raft which was fire-proof, compact, safe and readily launched. Her design was used on many ships including the Titanic where it saved over 700 lives.
5. Hedy Lamarr (1914 – 2000) was born in Austria. She became a Hollywood film star. In 1942 she and a friend were granted a patent for a form of wireless communication using frequency hopping. It is used today in wi-fi and bluetooth. She is honoured in the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
6. Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) overcame immense physical handicaps to become a leading campaigner for women’s suffrage, labour rights and socialism.
7. Marie Curie (1867 – 1934) was born in Poland but moved to France where she carried out pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences (chemistry and physics). She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.
8. Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976) wrote 66 detective novels and 14 sets of short stories. And Then There Were None is Christie’s best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world’s best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time. Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest run. It opened in 1952, and is still running after more than 27,000 performances.
9. Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992) earned a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University. She was a pioneer of computer programming who developed the concept of the compiler and created the COBOL programming language. She became a rear admiral in the US Navy and the destroyer USS Hopper is named after her.
10. Mary Anderson (1866 – 1953) was an American real estate developer, rancher, and viticulturist. In 1903 she was granted a patent for an automatic car window cleaning device.
11. Valentina Tereshkova was born in 1937 in central Russia. She was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur skydiver who was chosen as a cosmonaut. In 1963 she completed 48 orbits of the Earth and became the first woman and the first civilian to fly in space.
12. Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century (1979-1990) and the first woman to hold that office. A Soviet journalist gave her the nickname ‘The Iron Lady’. She was considered the most powerful woman in the world in the 1980s and was highly influential in implementing neoliberal policies and in helping end the cold war.
13. Stephanie Kwolek (1923 – 2014) was an American chemist of Polish descent. While working at Dupont she invented a synthetic fibre of exceptional strength, Kevlar. It is stronger than steel and has hundreds of applications ranging from tennis rackets to bullet-proof vests.
14. Oprah Winfrey was born in Mississippi in 1954. She rose to fame as a talk-show host with an intimate confessional style of interview. She became an actress, producer, political activist and philanthropist. She created her own media network and is influential across the world as a symbol of female empowerement.
15. J K Rowling is the author who invented the magical world of Harry Potter. The series of books have sold over 500 million copies. They are credited with reigniting an interest in reading among children.
