4 Women Who Changed History

From the first female feminist, Emma Goldman, to the great physicist and chemist Marie Curie, the world is made up of a wide range of women who have raised their voices, stood up, and fought vigorously for their emancipation from the narrow-minded society. Women who represented the female sex in a war without weapons. Women who left their mark on history for their work and their deep faith in a better world. Women scientists, actresses, singers, and politicians. Even little girls, everyday people who affected history and laid the foundation for evolution and hope. Today, we explore the exciting world of four women who have affected human history in different ways.

Sappho (630-570 BC)

Sappho is the woman who marked the ancient world with her love poems. In ancient Greece, renowned men were amazed by her poetry. Plato had described her as the Tenth Muse. According to Alcaeus, she was a “sacred woman.” In the history of Western civilization, she is considered the “woman who wrote the best poetry ever written.”

She praised Love, transformed poetry into admiration for the female form, and left the timeless description of desire in her legacy 2,600 years ago. “…listening to you sweet-talk and laugh so beautifully. That makes my heart stir in my breasts. For every moment I look at you, no word comes to my lips, but my tongue freezes in silence.” These words were written over 2.500 years ago and are still embraced by those who love poems.

Catherine The Great (1729-1796)

Catherine II, or Cathrine The Great, is a female Empress of Russia with German ancestry. She was an important woman of the 18th century with great influence around the world. She carried out administrative reform, the country’s territorial division, and the judicial system reform.

She enlarged the territory of the Russian state by annexing Crimea, the Black Sea, and the eastern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this way, Russia became the largest country on the European continent.

Marie Curie (1867-1934)

Words about this woman are never enough. She was the first female professor at Sorbonne University, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize, and the first person to be awarded the award mentioned above in two different categories. In 1903, she won the Nobel Prize in Physics for her research and contribution to the path to the discovery of radioactivity.

The second Nobel Prize in 1911 was about chemistry. Only a few years later, she significantly contributed to the creation of the first X-ray machine. Madame Curie died on July 4, 1934, as she suffered from leukemia due to her excessive exposure to radiation. The work she left behind is one of the most important in the history of science, which has been – and still is – a source of solving several medical issues.

Valentina Tereshkova (1937-2004)

This Russian astronaut is the first woman to be in space. She was born on March 6, 1937, in a small Russian village, Maslenikovo. After completing school, she started working in a tire factory and later in a textile mill. At the same time, she received training to become a paratrooper at a local Aeroclub. In 1961, despite not being a pilot, she was selected among hundreds of candidates as one of the top five women in the Soviet Union’s space program.

After hard training, she became the first woman to travel in space with the single-seat spacecraft Vostok 6. The purpose was to study the functioning of the female body in space. Tereshkova was honored with many awards around the world. For her time, she was considered one of the symbols of women’s liberation.

These were only a few of the female figures that adorned history with their talent and work. But there are billions of other women next to us, in our lives and families, who give their own daily battles. 

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