Since then, I've found a few more and will link to them below, but there certainly is a common theme: almost all of them are female or belong to an ethnic or racial minority. And since the NY Times recently did an entire piece on women who had changed history over the past 100 years, I'll make this my last post on the subject, but since I had been collecting these, I might as well add them here.
- A pioneering paleontologist and avid fossil collector, Mary Anning’s discoveries have contributed significantly to modern-day science. But until recently, she was relatively unknown.
- Gladys West, a mathematician whose modeling of the Earth’s shape played a critical role in the development of GPS worked in near obscurity. She was almost 90 before she received any recognition for her work.
- A comedian's take on The Grapefruit Ladies of Ireland who helped end apartheid in South Africa.
And finally, my favorite, a story about a Philadelphia woman named Caroline Rebecca LeCount, who preceded Rosa Parks, but performed the same action, and whose name was almost lost to history.
LeCount’s work is frequently likened to that of Rosa Parks. But, many officials celebrated her work as a basis for Park’s later work.
“It has been suggested that Caroline LeCount was the Rosa Parks of her time, but since Caroline came before Rosa, I like to think that Rosa Parks was the Caroline LeCount of her time,” said Marianne McQuaid, a senior designer on Maps & Schedules with SEPTA.
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