- [Diemoth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diemoth): 12th-century recluse who transcribed at least forty-five manuscripts; notable for her "beautiful handwriting"
- [Enheduanna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna): first known poet
- [Herrad of Landsberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrad_of_Landsberg): 12th-century nun who wrote an early pictoral encyclopedia, *Hortus deliciarum*, to teach the women in her convent about the sciences of the time
- [Edna St. Vincent Millay](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay?lang=en): first woman (and second person!) to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- [Julian of Norwich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich): author of *Revelations of Divine Love*, the earliest surviving English-language works attributed to a woman
- [Lotte Reiniger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_Reiniger): director/writer of the oldest surviving animated feature film, [_The Adventures of Prince Achmed_](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Prince_Achmed)
- [Susan Kare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Kare): "pioneer of pixel art"; designed many of the icons, fonts, and images for Apple, NeXT, and IBM in the 1980s
- [Ruth Teitelbaum](https://web.archive.org/web/20221129021942/https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-women-behind-eniac): one of the six women who programmed ENIAC
- [Gladys West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_West): mathematician who developed the satellite geodesy models eventually developed into the Global Positioning System (GPS)
- [Gertrude Elion](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_B._Elion?lang=en): biochemist and Nobel Prize winner instrumental in the creation of the first antiviral drug widely used to fight AIDS
- [Mildred Catherine Rebstock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Rebstock): first person to synthesise chloromycetin (an antibiotic)
- [Trota of Salerno](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trota_of_Salerno): first gynecologist
- [Nettie Stevens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettie_Stevens): discovered that chromosomes determine sex
- [Flossie Wong-Staal](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossie_Wong-Staal): proved that HIV causes AIDS
## Science
- [Patricia Bath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Bath): inventor of the Laserphaco Probe
- [Ethel Bauer](https://web.archive.org/web/20220716220051/https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/ethel-heinecke-bauer.html): planned lunar trajectories for the Apollo program, critical to 13's safe return
- [Jocelyn Bell Burnell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell): discovered first pulsar
- [Annie Jump Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon): developed the first stellar classification system; classified almost 400,000 stars
- [Mary Jackson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jackson_(engineer)): NASA's first Black female engineer
- [Mae Jemison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Jemison): first Black woman in space
- [Katherine Johnson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson): mathematician crucial for the success of the first USA spaceflights
- [Mary Kenner](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenner): inventor of the menstrual pad; holder of the record for the most patents awarded to a Black woman in the USA
- [Inge Lehmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inge_Lehmann): discovered the Earth has a solid inner core
- [Emmy Noether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether): mathematician; discovered her namesake First and Second Theorems (fundamental in mathematical physics)
- [Cecilia Payne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin): discovered what the universe and sun are made of
- [Clarice Phelps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Phelps): part of the team that discovered element 117 (tennessine); first Black woman involved with the discovery of a chemical element
- [Vera Rubin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Rubin): discovered dark matter
- [Seondeok of Silla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Seondeok_of_Silla): set up first astronomy tower in Asia
- [Donna Strickland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Strickland): winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification
- [Judy Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Sullivan): biomedical engineer for the Apollo 11 spaceflight
- [Maria Telkes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1ria_Telkes): co-built first solar-power-heated heated home with Eleanor Raymond
- [Marie Tharp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Tharp): mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; proved the theory of continential drift
- [Chien-Shiung Wu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chien-Shiung_Wu): first woman to become president of the American Physical Society; worked on the Manhattan Project and proved that parity is not conserved
- [Claudette Colvin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin): pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement; refused to give up her bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks did
- [Barbara Gittings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Gittings): "mother of the gay rights movement"; part of the movement to get the APA to drop homosexuality as a mental illness
- [Temple Grandin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin): one of the first public figures to publically come out as Autistic; animal welfare activist that campaigned for humane treatment of cattle in beef processing plants
- [Maura Healey](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Maura_Healey?lang=en): first open lesbian elected attorney general of a USA state, one of the first LGBT governors of a USA state, and first woman elected governor of the state of Massachusetts
- [Judith Heumann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Heumann): held the longest sit-in in a government building for the enactment of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (civil rights protection for disabled people)
- [Elizabeth Peratrovich](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Peratrovich?lang=en): instrumental in the passing of the USA's first anti-discrimination law
- [Bessie Coleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Coleman): first Black woman to earn an international pilot's license; first known female aviator
- [Martha Gellhorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Gellhorn): journalist and WWII war correspondent; pretended to be a nurse to be the only woman at Normandy on D-Day
- [Helen Lewis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_(journalist)): journalist and namesake of "Lewis' Law": "the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism"
- [Rose Valland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Valland): captain in the French military during WWII; saved thousands of works of art from being stolen by the Nazis
