Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was born in New York City, New York. She was a curious child with technological tendencies who loved to dismantle alarm clocks and other household goods to see how they worked. Growing up, she attended private schools, and at 17, she started studying mathematics and physics at Vassar College. After graduating from Phi Beta Kappa, she attended Yale University, receiving her M.A degree in 1930. This same year, at 24, she married Vincent Foster Hopper, keeping the name Hopper after they divorced 15 years later. In the following year, she returned to Vassar as a math teacher while continuing her education at Yale, and in 1934 she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics, becoming one of the first women to receive a doctorate in this field. In 1941, when the US entered WW2, the 34-year-old Hopper tried to enlist in the Navi but was rejected because of her age and low weight-to-height ratio. After two years, she applied again and got accepted into the United States Navy (women) Reserve. She took a leave of absence from Vassar and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University. There, she joined the staff who worked on Mark I computer – the first large-scale automatic calculator and co-authored its guidebook, A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. After the war, Hopper stayed at the Harvard Computation Lab for a few more years as a civilian research fellow. In 1949, at 43, she was hired by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. as a head programmer. In this position, she worked on the design of UNIVAC I – the first general-purpose electronic digital computer for business applications and the first large-scale electronic commercial computer. At the time, Hopper recommended developing a programing language that would use English words which later will be translated into code by the computer. After having her initiative rejected, she published a paper about it in 1952, coining the term Compiler to describe the process. It took five more years and a change of management, and in 1957, under the Sperry Rand Corp., Hopper, who was now the first director of automatic programming, oversaw the development of the Flow-Matic – the first English-like data-processing compiler. This programing language has inspired the development of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) in 1960. Over the next decade, Hopper promoted the new language, which gradually was adapted, becoming the most used programming language in the world by the 1970s. While working in the private sector, Hopper maintained her naval career as a reservist until 1966, when she reached 60 and had to retire. It took less than a year before the Navy recalled her to active duty to help standardize its computer languages. In 1971, she retired for the second time, and again, she was asked to return in the following year. In 1973, at the age of 67, Hopper was promoted from commander to captain, and in 1983, to the rank of commodore, which two years later incorporated into rear admiral, becoming one of the Navy’s few women in this rank. Hopper, the oldest serving officer in the Navy, retired from the service for the third time in 1985 at the age of 79. Afterward, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation, where she mainly served as a goodwill ambassador, giving lectures about computing, its early development, and future potential. In 1991, she became the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Technology. She died the following year, at the age of 85. Read more...

Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in poverty after her father left the family when she was only a few months old. At the age of 8, she started working as a domestic servant for white families to support her family. Later on, she lived on the streets and earned money as a street performer. At 13, she began to work as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur’s Club, where she met Willie Wells. The couple got married but divorced only a few months later. She joined a street performance group, and in 1923, at the age of 16, she moved with them to NYC, leaving her second husband, William Howard Baker, whom she married the previous year. In NYC, she performed at the Plantation Club while auditioning for serval productions, finally landing a role in the chorus line of the Broadway revue Shuffle Along. Her comic touch made her stand out as an audience favorite, and soon, she booked her next Broadway role in the course line of The Chocolate Dandies. In 1925, at 18, Baker moved to Paris to dance in La Revue Nègre at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she introduced to the French audience her danse sauvage (savage dance), wearing nothing but a skirt made of a string of bananas. Her star was on the rise, and she became one of the most popular entertainers in France, being admired by artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso, who drew paintings of her. After a successful European tour in 1929, she acted in numerous films. With the money she earned, Baker bought an estate in the South of France called Château des Milandes. In the mid-30s, she sailed back to the US, trying to establish herself as a performer in her home country, but left after being scrutinized by the critics and receiving racist reactions from the crowd. On her return to France, she married her third husband, the French industrialist Jean Lion, and gave up her American citizenship to become a French citizen. When WW2 erupted, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. As an entertainer, she traveled across occupied Europe and socialized with German politicians and high-rank officials to gather information. When Nazi Germany invaded France, she moved to her estate in the south, joined the Red Cross, and worked for Free France – the exiled French government. Later, she relocated to the French colony in Morocco, smuggling hidden messages in music sheets while entertaining the troops in North Africa and the Middle East. After the war, she received numerous honors for her work with the resistance. In 1947, Baker married her fourth husband, the French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, returning to Paris and the stage, more popular than ever for her performance and tribute to the war effort. In 1951, she was invited to perform in the US and was appalled by the racial discrimination she had encountered. Though no longer an American citizen, she began to work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and by refusing to perform in segregated venues, she helped to integrate live shows in Miami and Las Vegas. Baker could not get pregnant because of a hysterectomy due to complications of a stillbirth she had during the war. In the early 1950s, she began adopting children from different ethnicities and religions, calling her family The Rainbow Tribe. They lived on her estate in Southern France, which included a farm, rides, and numerous hotels. She charged an entrance fee for guests to use the facilities and watch her children sing, dance, and view her “experiment in brotherhood.” In 1968, at the age of 62, after a few years off the stage, she realized that her popularity had declined. In 1973, she made a comeback when performing at Carnegie Hall in NYC and was greeted with a standing ovation. In Paris, two years later, she had 50 years in business revue financed by Princess Grace and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The sold-out show was attended by A-listers such as Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger, and Diana Ross. Four days later, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was found in her bed surrounded by newspapers with raving reviews of her show. She died in the following year at the age of 68. Read more...

Sarah Rosetta Wakeman was born on the family farm in Bainbridge, New York, the oldest of nine children. Growing up, she worked on the farm and later as a domestic servant. Her family’s financial problems posed difficulties in finding her a possible suitor. In addition, she realized that manual labor is more profitable than domestic work, so at 19 years old, Wakeman left her home looking for a job disguised as a man. Soon she began to work as a boatman on a coal barge traveling on the Chenango Canal. While on a trip upriver, she met army recruiters who offered her a $13 monthly salary and a $152.00 signing bonus if she joined the Union Army. The offer was too good to refuse, and on August 30, 1862, she got enlisted to the 153rd New York Infantry Regiment as a 21 years old man named Lyons Wakeman. In her first year on service, her regiment protected the food supplies in Virginia, and Washington, DC. In February 1864, the unit got transferred to Louisiana to participate in the Red River Campaign. They marched almost 700 miles through swampy terrain with limited food and water to reach the Pleasant Hill, Louisiana battle. After the Union army was forced to retreat, Wakeman and her fellow comrades fought at the Monett’s Bluff before arriving safely in Alexandria, Louisiana. During the battle, Wakeman, like other thousands of Union soldiers, had to drink water from streams contaminated by rotting dead animals, which caused her chronic diarrhea. She was hospitalized in the Marine USA General Hospital in New Orleans, where she died at 21 years old. Her true identity was not revealed, and she was buried in a military service at Chalmette National Cemetery under her fake male name Lyons Wakeman. Throughout the war, she corresponded with her family, sending them money and detailing her experiences, thoughts, and observations as a soldier. Her family preserved the letters and kept them hidden for centuries until 1976, when her sister’s great-grandson found them in the attic of the farmhouse where she grew up, discovering the heroic story of his relative and telling it to the world. Read more...

Mary Edwards Walker was born in Oswego, New York. Her parents, Vesta and Alvah, were progressive who raised their children to independence and critical thinking. They did not obey the traditional gender roles, and while her mother worked at the farm, her father did household chores. To provide equal education to all of their children, they established the first free school in the city, which Walker attended until she went to the Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York. After graduation, she worked as a teacher until she saved enough money to pay for medical school. In 1855, at the age of 23, she graduated with honors from Syracuse Medical College – the only woman in her class and the second in the college’s history. From a young age, Walker preferred to wear men’s clothes instead of restricting and uncomfortable skirts, petticoats, and corsets. This preference, as well as her views of women’s role, were visible when she married Albert Miller, a fellow medical student. At the wedding, she refused to say “obey” in her vows, wore a short skirt with trousers instead of a dress, and kept her last name. In their short-lived marriage, the couple opened a practice in Rome, New York, but it failed because female physicians were frown-upon. At 28, Walker attended Bowen Collegiate Institute but got suspended after refusing to resign from the school’s male-only debating society. Over time, she became blunter, demonstrating dress reform, and by the age of 30, her typical outfit was a knee-length dress with a tight waist and full skirt with trousers and suspenders underneath. Even though she was often criticized and ridiculed, she kept advocating the idea that clothes should “protect the person, and allow freedom of motion and circulation, and not make the wearer a slave to it.” In 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Walker wanted to join the Union army as a surgeon but was rejected because of her gender. Instead, she volunteered as a civilian at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, DC. There, she established a Women’s Relief Organization to help the families of wounded soldiers. In 1862, she moved to Virginia to treat soldiers near the front lines, and in the following year, she was hired by the Army of the Cumberland as a “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)” – the first female surgeon of the Union army. She insisted on wearing men’s clothes, which enable her to be more efficient in her work. Later she was assigned to the 52nd Ohio Infantry, regularly crossing the battle lines to treat civilians. On April 10, 1864, right after helping a Confederate doctor, Walker was captured by the Confederate army and was arrested as a spy. She was imprisoned at Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, for four months before being released in a prisoner exchange. In 1865, Walker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor for her work during the war (the first and only woman ever to receive it). In 1916, the medal was taken from her due to eligibility issues. More than 60 years later, her honor restored when President Jimmy Carter reinstated it. After the war, Walker worked as a supervisor at a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and later as head of an orphanage in Tennessee. She continued to lobby for dress reform and women’s rights. She was an active member of the central woman’s suffrage Bureau in Washington, DC, and in the elections of 1871, she unsuccessfully attempted to register to vote. Opposing the mainstream suffrage fight for a constitutional amendment, Walker argued that the Constitution already granted women the right to vote. Although she was not aligned with the movement, she continued to attend conventions and testified on its behalf in front of the US House of Representatives. Walker died in February 1919, only six months before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. She was buried in a black suit. Read more...

Born as Harriet Wood in New Orleans, Louisiana, but grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where her father, a Spanish merchant, has established a Trading Post with Native Americans. Growing up, she used to ride horses and shoot shotguns while fantasying about becoming an actress. At 18, she moved to NYC to pursue her dream and took the stage name Pauline Cushman. She met Charles Dickinson, and in 1853 they got married and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. At the onset of the Civil War, her husband enlisted in the Union Army as a musician but soon fell ill with dysentery and passed away a few months later. Cushman, now a widow with two children, wanted to return to the stage. She left her children with her in-laws and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, which at the time was a Union state, full of Confederate sympathizers. In April 1863, while preparing to perform in the play The Seven Sisters, she was approached by two Confederate officers who offered her $350 for toasting the Confederate President during the play, instead of President Lincoln. Hesitated, Cushman turned to the Union authorities, who told her to accept the proposition, and so she did. She was immediately fired from the show but was offered a new job – a spy for the Union Army. As a spy, Cushman utilized her acting skills and posed as a Confederate sympathizer. Sometimes dresses as a man and sometimes as a woman, she was able to befriend military commanders and gather information. Pretending to be a Southern woman in a boarding house, she managed to stop the boarding house’s mistress from poisoning Union soldiers, and while dressed as a man, she joined a Southern woman who brought confident documents to the south and had the Union to confiscate her papers. Cushman’s biggest mission was in 1864 when she entered a Confederate camp in Tennessee under the appearance that she is searching for her missing brother. She managed to steal drawings of fortification plans but was caught by Confederate soldiers. Though Cushman escaped captivity, she was captured and brought to trial before a military court. She was sentenced to hang, but her execution was delayed after becoming sick or pretending to be one. Eventually, by the time she got better, the Union had invaded the area, and she was spared. After that incident, Cushman received public attention as well as recognition from General Garfield and President Lincoln. She was awarded the rank of brevet major and was honored as “Major of Calvary.” She received a military uniform, which she used in her lectures and performing tours after the war. Over time, the public became exhausted hearing about war stories, and Cushman’s popularity had declined. She moved to San Francisco, and in 1872 she got married, but her husband passed away in the following year. A widow for the second time, Cushman moved to Arizona, where she met her third husband, Jeremiah Fryer. They ran together a hotel for ten years, but their marriage did not survive the death of their daughter, and they separated in 1890. Cushman, then living in poverty, returned to San Francisco and spent her last years working as a charwoman and seamstress. At the time, she suffered from rheumatism and arthritis and became addicted to pain medications. At the age of 60, Cushman had died from a morphine overdose. With her death, her Civil War honors and fame were recalled, and she was buried with full military honors. Read more...

Virginia Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a wealthy family. From a young age, she loved to hunt and always looked for new adventures. She went to Radcliffe College and Barnard College, studying French, German, and Italian, and then French and Economics at George Washington University. She took off to Europe to continue her education. After traveling around, she began to work as a Consular Service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, and a few months later, she was transferred to Izmir, Turkey. There, at the age of 27, Hall accidentally shot herself in the foot while hunting birds. The leg was amputated, and she used a wooden prosthesis. She continued to work as a clerk in several more American embassies in Europe while applying to become a diplomat. She got rejected over and over, first because of her gender and then because of her disability. In 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded France, Hall became an ambulance driver for the France army. After France was defeated, she met a British spy, who recognized her potential and connected her with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). In 1941, after only six months of training, Hall arrived in Vichy France – the second SOE female agent to be sent to France. She settled in Lyon and posed as a reporter for the New York Post. This allowed her to interview people and gather information. Hall began to arrange contacts, persuade nuns to help her, and befriend a brothel owner who gave her information gathered from the prostitutes of the German soldiers. Soon, she founded an SOE agent network, organized French resistance fighters, and helped downed British pilots to escape to safety. In October 1941, she engineered a successful jailbreak of several SOE agents who were captured. At this point, the Germans considered her one of the most dangerous of Allied spies, and they were after her. Hall managed to escape to Spain on a three-day journey in which she walked with her wooden leg more than 7,500 feet over the snowy Pyrenees Mountains. When she arrived in Spain, she was arrested by the local authorities for trespassing the border and was jailed for six weeks.   Hall continued to work for the SOE in Madrid, and in the summer of 1943, she returned to London. She wanted to return to France, but her superiors denied her request because it was too dangerous. She took a wireless course that enabled her to work for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Despite her experience and achievements, she was hired by the Special Operations Branch of the OSS as a low-rank second lieutenant. In March 1944, she returned to France as an assistant and wireless operator to an older male officer. She thought of him as talkative, and as such, he was a security risk, so she branched out on her own. Hall disguised herself as an old milkmaid, unrecognized with gray hair and bad teeth. Her mission was to arm and train groups to support the Allied invasion of Normandy. She organized drop zones, established safe houses, and supplied arms for infrastructure attacks and sabotage operations against the Germans. During that time, she met Paul Goillot, an OSS lieutenant who worked for her. He later became her husband. In 1974, at the age of 41, Hall was hired by the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – one of the first women to join the agency. She worked as an intelligence analyst, gathering intelligence on Soviet operations in Europe. When she was 60 years old, Hall retired from the CIA and moved with her husband to a farm in Barnesville, Maryland, where she lived until her death at age 76. Read more...

Lillie Hitchcock was born in West Point, New York, and at the age of 7, the family moved to San Francisco, California. Not long after, she was rescued from a burning hotel by the Knickerbockers Number 5. Fascinated by the firefighters and their missions, she started watching them and cheering them on their job. One day, on her way home, she witnessed firefighters responding to a call on Telegraph Hill. Short of staff, they struggled to pull the engine up the hill, 15 years old Coit, rushed to help them, taking the empty spot on the line. From that day on, she became the mascot of the company, rushing out for every alarm, and earning the nickname “Firebelle Lil.” Growing older, she was known for her eccentric behavior – smoking cigars, wearing trousers, and gambling. She even used to dress like a man to enter the male-only gamblers’ clubs. When her father died, she inherited his fortune, which allowed her to travel to Europe back and forth. She stopped following the firefighters regularly but always visited them on her visits in the US, giving them souvenirs from her travel, joining their parades, and attending their banquets. When she was 20 years old, she became an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5, the first woman in the US to be a firefighter squad member. At age 26, she married Howard Coit, a caller at the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and together they continued to travel around the world. Coit died in San Francisco at the age of 86. Her ashes were placed at a mausoleum, next to various firefighting memorials. She left one-third of her wealth to the city of San Francisco. It was spent building the Coit Tower, a beautiful tower on Telegraph Hill, as well as for sponsoring a statue of three firefighters at the corner of Washington Square Park, one of them depicted carrying a young girl to safety. Read more...

Kate Warne was born in Erin, Chemung County, New York, to a family of modest means. Growing up, she wanted to be an actress, but her family opposed the idea, so she became the next best thing – a spy. In 1856, 23 years old Warne, who presented herself as a widow, walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago, responding to an advertisement she saw in the local newspaper. At the time, female detectives were unheard of, and Allan Pinkerton, the head of the agency, was surprised to learn that she did not come to apply for the secretary position. Warne raised some reasonable arguments to get the job – women can go undercover, gain access to places men cannot, they have an eye for details, and they can befriend girlfriends and wives of the suspects. Though he was reluctant at first, she was able to convince him to hire her, the first female detective in his agency and the US.   For the next 12 years, she was involved in various high-profile investigations, serving as Pinkerton’s right hand. In 1858, she became a close friend of a wife of a prime suspect of Adams Express Company embezzlements, providing evidence for his convection. Three years later, she was a key figure in uncovering an assassination plot against the president-elect Abraham Lincoln. As part of her assignment, she escorted Lincoln on the train to Washington, DC, on the way to his inauguration. He posed as an invalid passenger, she went undercover as his sister and caregiver, staying up all night to make sure he remained undirected while passing through Baltimore, where the assassination meant to happen and bringing Lincoln safely to DC. During the Civil War, she worked as a spy, posing as Pinkerton’s wife while collecting military intelligence for the Union Army. After the war, she continued to work undercover in numerous cases, as well as serving as Supervisor of Women Agents, coordinating the activities of other female detectives that joined the agency after her. She died at the age of 35 from pneumonia and was buried in the Pinkerton Family Plot alongside several other Pinkerton agents at Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. Read more...

Sampson was born in Plympton, Massachusetts. In her youth, her father abandoned the family, and she was sent into care at family members and later to work as a servant. Even though she didn’t get any formal education, she learned to read, and at the age of 18, she worked as a teacher, as a skilled weaver and a light carpenter. When Sampson was 22 years old, during the American Revolutionary War, she decided to join the (male-only) army. She cut her hair, dressed in men’s clothes and called herself Timothy Thayer. This attempt failed when she was recognized by a local resident. Her second try was more successful, and again she cross-dressed and joined as “Robert Shirtliff” to an elite unit that was known for choosing above average tall and strong men. Due to her unusual height (approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall), nobody suspected she’s a woman. Sampson fought in several battles until she got wounded in her thigh by two musket balls and suffered from a cut on her forehead. Even though she didn’t want to be treated, she was taken to a hospital. Out of fear that her secret will be revealed, she left before they attend her thigh and she removed one of the bullets herself. The second one was too deep, and her leg never fully recovered. Her injury didn’t stop her; she continued to serve and was assigned as a General’s waiter. A year later, Sampson became ill, and the doctor who treated her discovered her true gender and identity. Instead of informing the army authorities, he took her to his home, where his wife and daughters took care of her. Sampson served in the army as a man for 17 months. Two years after her release, she got married. They were poor, with four children, couldn’t farm their land and the army withheld her payment because she was a woman, so she had to borrow money from family and friends, one of them was Paul Revere who requested on her behalf the pension she deserved. At the age of 42, in order to make a living, Sampson began giving lectures about her time in the army. In those lectures, she used to go off the stage, change to her uniform and perform complicated military drills. After 33 years of recurring attempts, the Congress approved Sampson’s petition, and she got the money owed her for serving the country. Sampson died at the age of 66 from yellow fever. Only years after her death, she was acknowledged for her bravery and heroism.   Read more...

Born to a family of peasants in 15th-century Domrémy, France, Joan listened to the voices of saints guiding her to drive the English out of French territories. She followed the calling, an unusual act to her age and gender at these old times, and with determination, she made her way into the French army. At only 17 years old, Joan of Arc led the forces towards victory in the battle for Orleans, followed by more victories. Sadly, after several months on the battlefields, she got captured. She was found guilty of heresy in her trial, and burnt alive in front of thousands of people at the marketplace of Rouen. She was only 19 years old. In 16th century France, she was announced as innocent and became a national heroine. About 500 years later, she was declared and canonized a Roman Catholic Saint by the Pope. Joan d’Arc became a symbol of persistence, determination, fearlessness, and leadership, and due to her gender, she is also a contradiction to the notion of inequality. Read more...