(1917 –2006) – Organic Chemist

Chatterjee was the first woman scientist to receive a Doctor of Science from an Indian university. She was born in Calcutta in 1917, at a time when it was rare for girls to go into higher education. Nonetheless, with her father’s support, she studied Chemistry and graduated from the Scottish Church College, University of Calcutta in 1936. As an organic chemist, she is noted for her work in the fields of phytomedicine and developing anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs. She made significant contributions in fighting cancer and published around 400 papers in national and international journals. Inspirational because of her devotion to hard work and unquenching thirst for knowledge. 

‘I wish to work as long as I love.’

Lucy Hannah

Read more: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/women-scientists-of-india-dr-asima-chatterjee-indian-academy-of-sciences/qgWhCdKgS8UJIw?hl=en

(1967 on) – Molecular Virologist

Christine Carrington was born in 1967 in St Augustine, Trinidad but spent most of her childhood in Orange Grove, Tacarigua. Her mother was her biology teacher and nurtured her love for science. Her father encouraged her to read and discuss what she had learned with him. Her fascination with viruses came from the way in which they could find their way inside cells, and literally hijack and take control of them. Christine studied at for her BA and PhD in London and has been involved in infectious disease research since 1990. She is currently Head of Preclinical Sciences at the University of the West Indies St Augustine campus in Trinidad. She has written for many publications, has received awards for outstanding mentorship and is keen to help educate and raise awareness among the public. She also encourages budding scientists to, ‘Read widely. Don’t just read science. Music, art and drama are not just for artists. They, too, can help you achieve your goals.’

Dominique Le Gendre

Read more: https://sta.uwi.edu/tropicalmedicine/staff/christine-carrington

https://icons.niherst.gov.tt/icon/christine-carrington-cw/

(1940 on) – Solicitor / Human Rights activist

Born Jean Webb in 1940 in Cheltenham, Gareth Pierce worked as a journalist in the USA in the 1960s, following the career of Martin Luther King Jnr. She returned to the UK in 1970, undertook her postgraduate law degree and started as a law trainee in 1974. She is an amazing individual who has led many high-profile human rights cases in the UK over many decades. An inspiration to all who fight for truth and justice.

Lucy Davies

I have read with great admiration of the work of solicitor Gareth Peirce in her defence of the Guildford Four, The Birmingham Six, Moazzam Begg and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes. This quote from the Wikipedia page on her sums up her integrity: We have lost our way in this country. We have entered a new dark age of injustice and it is frightening that we are overwhelmed by it. I know I am representing innocent people; innocent people who know that a jury they face will inevitably be predisposed to find them guilty.

Dominique Le Gendre

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Peirce

(1965 on) – Politician

Mia Amor Mottley is a Barbadian politician and attorney who has served as Prime Minister of Barbados since 2018 and as leader of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) since 2008. She is the eighth person to hold the office of Prime Minister in Barbados and the first woman to hold either position. She is also Barbados’ first prime minister under its republican system, following constitutional changes she introduced which abolished the country’s constitutional monarchy. She was the first woman to hold the post of Attorney-General of Barbados. Her blistering speech at COP23 brought worldwide attention to climate change affecting island nations. She is friends with many Barbadian music artists and recently chided Lil Rick for some of his lyrics around gun violence – he apologised to ‘Aunty Mia’ a few days later. She has pledged to reform LGBTQIA+ rights on the island and to recognise same-sex civil partnerships.  

Sarah Sanders

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_Mottley

Her COP23 speech: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6THYZ4ngM

(1933-2020) – Judge

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She became a feminist icon who has left behind a legacy of achievements in the advancement of women’s rights. In 1993 Ginsburg was appointed to the US Supreme Court, becoming the second female justice to ever sit on the Court and the first Jewish female justice to do so. Ginsburg was considered part of the Supreme Court’s moderate-liberal bloc, presenting a strong voice in favour of gender equality, the rights of workers and the separation of Church and State. 

‘Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.’

Lucy Hannah

Read more: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/entertainment/a25722034/why-ruth-bader-ginsburg-is-our-feminist-hero/

(1874-1950) – Author and Teacher

Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto’s most famous book is A Daughter of the Samurai, with a subtitle which says ‘How a daughter of feudal Japan, living hundreds of years in one generation, became a modern American’. First published in 1926, this book captures life for post-1868 generations of Japanese people who emerged from 265 years of Japanese isolationist foreign policy to begin to interact with the outside world – at a time when Japan’s old feudal system was crumbling. It’s a great read from a woman born into the samurai class in Nagaoka, Niigata, who was educated as a Christian and, through an arranged marriage, went to live in the USA at the age of twenty-six. Etsu returned to Japan for a brief time after her husband died before going back to the USA, where she lived in New York, taught Japanese language and culture and wrote other books and articles. But it is this engaging and unusual memoir which is her best known work.

I was given this book by a friend when I lived in Japan in the late 1980s and it was such a revelation, throwing light on the history of Japan and its old traditions in an accessible way. I loved it immediately, and have re-read it several times since, due to Etsu’s wonderfully readable storytelling. 

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Read more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2065365/etsu-inagaki-sugimoto

(1893-1993) – Explorer and Travel Writer

Born in Paris where her parents were studying art, British-Italian Freya Stark was often ill as a young girl and found reading an escape, particularly One Thousand and One Nights, which ignited an interest in travel. As an explorer and travel writer, Stark travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, Italy and Asia. She spoke English, Italian, French and German and learned to speak Arabic, Iranian and Turkish. Stark wrote twenty-four books, several volumes of collected letters, and four volumes of memoir. Her fearlessness as a solo adventurer in the early twentieth century is inspirational. 

‘To feel, and think, and learn – learn always: surely that is being alive and young in the real sense.’

Lucy Hannah

Read more: https://world.expeditions.com/expedition-stories/stories/the-legacy-of-freya-stark/

(1956 on) – Writer and Founder of Disabled-Led Arts Organisation

Gaele was born in Yallourn, Victoria, Australia. She lived in Botswana as a citizen for a large part of her life, majoring in English and History at the University of Botswana before teaching in the English Department there. She studied in France and England, completing a PhD on South African women writers at the University of Hull. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia and is the founding director of Outlandish Arts, a disabled-led arts organisation. Gaele worked closely with Wally Carr to render a vivid account of his life in the literary biography My Longest Round: the life story of Wally Carr, about the Australian First Nations ex-champion boxer who held twelve titles in six divisions. She is also editor of Young Days: Bankstown Aboriginal Elders Oral History Project (2013). Her collection of short stories, Colour Me Blue, is published by Heinemann’s African Writers Series. Her short stories and poems appear in various literary magazines and anthologies, such as Botswana Women Write and Not Quite Right For Us. Her children’s fiction includes Thara Meets the Cassipoohka Man, which addresses global warming. It received the Zimbabwe Award for Children’s Literature. Most recently, Gaele’s animated poems have won numerous international awards.

A friend since the 1990s, Gaele’s commitment to the arts and equal rights is unwavering, and muscular dystrophy has proved no barrier to her continuing to create wonderful literature and more.

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Read more: https://www.gaelesobott.com/

(1797-1851) – Author

Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Shelley is widely considered to have produced the first work of science fiction. She was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous defender of women’s rights. At the age of sixteen, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. They had several children, of whom only one survived. A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein. Superficially a Gothic novel, influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth. After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.

Sarah Sanders

Read more: https://www.bl.uk/people/mary-shelley

(1941 on) – Author

Olive Senior is the award-winning author of eighteen books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature and other published work. She is currently Jamaica’s Poet Laureate. Her many awards include Canada’s Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. Her work has been taught internationally and is widely translated. Olive Senior is from Jamaica and lives in Toronto, Canada, but returns frequently to the Caribbean, which remains central to her work. 

Sarah Sanders

Read more: http://olivesenior.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Senior