Sylvia Alice Earle was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey. Her parents were nature lovers and encouraged her interest in the natural world and exploring the nearby woods. At 12, the family moved to Dunedin, Florida, by the waterfront, and she became fascinated by the seagrass beds and salt marshes. In 1952, at 17, after receiving an associate degree from St. Petersburg Jr. College, she went to study Botany at Florida State University and learned to dive with SCUBA gear. She continued her education at Duke University, writing her thesis on algae in the Gulf of Mexico, and received her Doctorate of Phycology (the scientific study of algae) in 1966. In 1965, at 30, Earle began her lifelong research career when accepting a position as Cape Haze Marine Laboratories resident director in Sarasota, Florida. Two years later, she became a research fellow at the Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University and joined the Radcliffe Institute as a research scholar. In one of her research dives in 1968, Earle discovered undersea dunes off the Bahamas coast. In 1970, 35 years old Earle led the first all-female team of aquanauts as part of the Tektite II experiment – an underwater housing and laboratory about 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface of Great Lameshur Bay off the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Throughout the two-week experiment, she documented the impacts of pollution on coral reefs. It was the first of many undersea researches Earle led over her career, which included expeditions to China, the Bahamas, and the Galapagos Islands. She began to work with the National Geographic Society, producing films and books on life in Earth’s oceans, and in 1979, was appointed curator of phycology at the California Academy of Sciences. That year, at 44, Earle set a new world record for untethered diving by descending 1,250 feet (381 meters) into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wearing a JIM diving suit – a specialized apparatus designed to maintain internal pressure equivalent to 1 standard atmosphere. In 1982, Earle and engineer Graham Hawkes, who later became her third husband, founded Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technology, a company that designs, supports, and operates piloted and robotic subsea systems. Within three years, they built the Deep Rover research submarine that can reach 3000 feet (914 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface. In 1990, Earle left the company to serve as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first woman to serve in this position. During her post, she led numerous expeditions to research the environmental damage caused by Iraq’s demolition of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Persian Gulf War. In 1992, she founded another marine technology company called Deep Ocean Exploration and Research. Over the following decades, Earle continued leading expeditions and setting more records as the first woman chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the first woman explorer in residence of the National Geographic Society. In 2009, Earle received a million-dollar prize from TED. It enabled her to found Mission Blue, a non-profit organization advocating for exploring and protecting the ocean and working to establish Hope Spots (marine protected areas) worldwide. The organization’s goal is to achieve 30% ocean protection by 2030, and as of 2020, its created more than 120 Hope Spots. Throughout her 60-year career, Earle has logged over 7,000 hours underwater, published over 150 scientific papers, and led over a hundred expeditions. Read more...

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, Kenya. At 11, she was sent to a boarding school at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri, where she learned English and converted to Catholicism. At 16, after graduating top of her class, she was granted admission to Loreto High School, a Catholic high school for girls. In 1960, 20 years old Maathai was one of the 300 Kenyans selected to study in the US as part of the Kennedy Airlift and studied biology, chemistry, and German at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas. After receiving an MSc in biological sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, she worked as a research assistant in the microanatomy section Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University College of Nairobi. Later, she moved to Germany to write her doctorate, completing it at the University of Nairobi while serving as an assistant lecturer. In 1971, at 31, Maathai became the first Eastern African woman to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi. In the early 1970s, Maathai became an active member of various civic organizations. She held positions such as director of the Nairobi branch of the Kenya Red Cross Society and board chair of the Environment Liaison Centre. She also continued her academic career, and in 1976, at 36, she was appointed chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and associate professor the following year, becoming the first woman to serve in these positions. At the time, she began to work with the National Council of Women of Kenya, formulating a strategy to involve women in rural areas in environmental conservation by planting trees. This initiative aimed to address the challenges of deforestation and desertification while providing a sustainable fuel source for communities. In 1977, she founded The Green Belt Movement, which in 1986 led to the founding of the Pan African Green Belt Network. Since its inception, the organization has planted approximately 40 million trees in Africa. Following their successes, many African countries, such as Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe, have adopted tree-planting initiatives to act against deforestation and promote environmental sustainability. Besides environmental conservation, Maathai advocated for other social causes, including human rights, AIDS prevention, and women’s issues, representing these concerns in United Nations General Assembly meetings. In 2002, at 62, Maathai was elected as the representative of the Tetu constituency in Kenya’s parliament, and a year later was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, serving in both positions until 2007. In 2004, Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her “holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in particular,” becoming the first Black African woman winner. She continued campaigning for environmental causes and human rights, becoming the first president of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council and as a Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem. In 2006, together with five other sister Nobel Peace winners, she founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative to unite and support global efforts for women’s rights, fostering peace, justice, and equality. Maathai died of ovarian cancer at the age of 71. Read more...

Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía was born in Washington, DC, where her father worked as a Mexican diplomat. When she was 3, her parents separated, her father returned to Mexico, and she, her mother, and six half-siblings moved around until settling down in Maryland. At 17, after completing her studies, she intended to join a convent but eventually moved to Mexico to supervise her father’s ranch, which she took over after he died. In 1897, at 27, Mexía married her first husband. After he died in 1904, she operated a pet and poultry stock-raising business and remarried. After her second husband bankrupted her company, she divorced him in 1906. Following a mental and physical breakdown, 39 years old Mexía left Mexico to receive medical treatment in San Francisco. There, she became active in the early environmental movement in California and joined the Sierra Club and Save the Redwoods League. She began hiking, went camping, and became interested in nature, specifically plants. In 1921, at 51, Mexía enrolled at UC Berkeley to study botany and began to collect and categorize plants. Four years later, she went on her first plant-collecting expedition to Mexico. Soon, she realized she preferred to work alone and broke off from her group, collecting 500 specimens in two months. During the next 13 years, Mexía traveled the Americas, collecting plants from Tierra del Fuego on the border of Chile and Argentina to the northern regions of Alaska. Mexía stood out not only by the number of expeditions she had or the mileage she covered but also by being an older woman who traveled alone on horseback, wearing trousers, and camping outdoors. Mexía regularly published the documentation of her adventures in the Audubon Society of the Pacific’s newsletter. While not on one of her expeditions, she lectured about them at various scientific organizations. In 1938, Mexía got sick during her expedition in Mexico. She had to cut the trip short and go back to the US. She died from lung cancer the following month at 68. In only 13 years of her career, Mexía collected over 145,000 plant specimens, discovering 500 new species. Read more...

Born Gerty Theresa Radnitz into a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She received her primary education at home and later attended an academy for girls, graduating at 16. Inspiring to become a doctor, she completed a year of the necessary studies required for the medical school’s application, including Latin, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In 1914, at 18, she began her studies at the medical school of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague. During school, she met fellow medical student Carl Cori, and they married right after receiving their degree in 1920. Afterward, they moved to Vienna, where she worked at the Carolinen Children’s Hospital, conducting experiments in temperature regulation and publishing papers on blood disorders. Health problems caused by malnutrition during WW1 and the increasing anti-Semitism drove the Coris to leave Europe, and in 1922, they immigrated to the US. They worked together at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, focusing on carbohydrate metabolism, researching the glucose metabolizing in the body and how hormones regulate the process. The couple published fifty papers on the subject, eleven with Cori as the sole author. In 1929, the Coris introduced the Cori cycle, which describes the cellular process in which the body stores sugar in muscles as glycogen, converts it to glucose in the liver, and sends it back to the muscles for energy. Although the Coris were equal in their work, they were not treated as such, and she experienced much chauvinism and prejudice. When the couple looked for an institute that would enable them to work together, they were refused because of Cori’s gender or because, as one university stated, it is “un-American for a married couple to work together.” Eventually, in 1931, the Coris received an offer from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Although they could collaborate, she was offered a research associate position at one-tenth of her husband’s salary. It took 13 years before she was appointed associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and four more years to be promoted to full professor, serving in this position until she died. While at Washington University, the Coris continued to research the action mechanism of hormones and discovered what would be known as the Cori ester – a compound in frog muscles that helps to break down glycogen. They also found the enzyme that created the compound and identified that it’s the first step in turning stored energy (glycogen) into glucose. In addition, Cori researched glycogen storage disease by herself and identified several forms related to enzymatic defects. She was the first to present how these defects can cause human genetic disorders. In 1947, for their discovery of the Cori cycle, the Coris won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first American woman, and the third in the world to win a Nobel Prize in Science. Months before winning the Nobel prize, Cori was diagnosed with myelosclerosis, a bone marrow disease. With declining health, she continued researching and discovering new enzymes and their relations to various health problems. She was also a member of several societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society of Biological Chemists. She died at 61. Read more...

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in Liuhe, China. Her parents supported her curiosity and interests and believed in equal education for all their children, regardless of gender. She first studied at Ming De School, a girls’ school her father had founded, and at 10, she went to a women’s boarding school that included a teacher training program. This school’s curriculum allowed her to cultivate her growing passion for science. At the time, government regulations ruled that teacher-training college students must serve as schoolteachers for one year before continuing to academic studies. So, she taught at a public school in Shanghai, administrated by the famous philosopher Hu Shih, who became her mentor and father figure. During her free time, she taught herself mathematics, and in 1930, she enrolled at the National Central University in Nanjing, studying mathematics and later switching to physics. After graduating, she worked as an assistant at Zhejiang University and as a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. In 1936, at 24, she was accepted to the University of Michigan and moved to the US. Upon her arrival, she discovered that the institute was highly discriminating against women, denying them access via the front entrance. Wu decided to study at a more liberal university and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. An exceptional student, she was chosen by the famous Italian physicist Emilio Segrè to work with him in his beta decay studies that later significantly contributed to the development of nuclear bombs. In 1940, Wu completed her Ph.D. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa but didn’t get a faculty position. She remained at Berkeley as a post-doctoral fellow at the Radiation Laboratory for two years. In 1942, at 30, she married fellow physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan. The couple moved to the East Coast, where she worked as an assistant professor and later associate professor at Smith College. In 1944, she accepted a position at Princeton University, becoming the first female faculty member of its Physics Department. That same year, she joined the research team of the Manhattan Project, which worked on the atomic bomb development. Based on her Ph.D. dissertation, Wu helped to determine the separation process of uranium into U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion and by that to improve the Geiger counters for the detection of radiation and the enrichment of uranium in large quantities. After WW2, Wu remained at Columbia University, becoming the first woman to serve as a tenured physics professor at Columbia. In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang asked her to conduct an experiment proving that the conservation of parity did not apply during beta decay. Though referred to as the “Wu experiment,” she didn’t receive any recognition when Chen and Yang received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for this theory. In the next three decades until her retirement in 1981, she worked on many theories that often crossed over to other scientific fields, including research on the molecular changes in red blood cells that cause sickle-cell anemia, research on magnetism, and Bell’s theorem, in which she confirmed the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 1975, at 63, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science in Physics. In her later years, Wu renewed her activism and became an advocate for various fights and causes. She protested against the imprisonment of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang and the journalist Lei Chen in Taiwan, which with her help, was eventually released. She spoke against gender discrimination, especially in the academic world, and promoted teaching STEM subjects to all students, regardless of gender, race, or background. She died following a stroke at the age of 85. Per her wish, her ashes were buried in the courtyard of the Ming De School. Read more...

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London into an influential Jewish family. She was a bright child, and from a young age, she attended elite schools, including the Norland Place School, the Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex, and St Paul’s Girls’ School, where she was among the few girls to be accepted. There, she demonstrated talent for math, science, and languages. At 18, after graduating with six distinctions, she was granted a scholarship to Newnham College, one of two women’s colleges at Cambridge University, where she majored in physical chemistry. After receiving her BA in 1941, she received a grant to conduct research in physical chemistry at Cambridge. The following year, she gave up her fellowship to contribute to the war effort, joining the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, where she researched the physical chemistry of coal and carbon. Her findings were the basis for her doctoral thesis, and in 1945 she received a doctorate from Cambridge. When WW2 ended, Franklin moved to Paris to work at Jacques Mering’s lab at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimique de l’Etat, studying X-ray diffraction technology and using it for her carbon research. Her discovery of the structural changes of atoms caused by the formation of graphite in heated carbons earned her an international reputation, and her work became part of the mainstream chemistry and physics of carbon and coal.   In 1951, at 31, Franklin was awarded a fellowship at the Biophysical Laboratory at King’s College, London. She used X-ray diffraction methods to study the new research field of DNA. Not only she discovered the density of DNA but established its double helix structure. Her groundbreaking work laid the foundations for James Watson and Francis Crick’s research, which defined the spiral consisting of two DNA strands; Along with Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 without giving Franklin any credit for her contributions. In 1953, she began to work at the Crystallography Laboratory at Birkbeck College, London, where she applied her DNA findings to researching the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. In 1956, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer but continued to work between surgeries and treatments. She died in 1958 at the age of 38. Read more...

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi was born in Bologna, Italy, into a wealthy family. She began her education at the age of five, first by her cousin, who taught her mathematics, Latin, and French, and later by Gaetano Tacconi, a professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, who taught her logic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. In 1731, Tacconi invited various scholars from the University of Bologna to examine the intellect of 20 years old Bassi. One of them was Prospero Lorenzini Lambertini (who later became Pope Benedict XIV), who was so impressed that he became her official patron. The following year, she was elected as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, becoming the first woman to join the academy. A month later, she defended her thesis in front of four university professors and received a doctorate in anatomy, which made her, at the age of 21, the first woman to receive a doctorate in science and the second woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy. A few months later, she defended 12 more theses in front of the Senate of the university as a petition to receive a teaching position. Though rejected at first, she eventually was nominated as a professor of natural philosophy, making another history as the first woman in the world to receive a salary as a lecturer. Bassi was not permitted to deliver public speeches but only private lessons. She received funds for the experiments she held at home; she constantly fought for equal teaching rights but to no avail. She explored many fields, including mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry, but her main interest was Newtonian physics. In her research, she became one of the leading figures in Italy to introduce Newton’s physics and natural philosophy. Over the years, she served as a member of numerous literary societies, including the Accademia degli Arcadi di Roma, Universitá degli Apastiti, Firenze, and the Accademia dei Placidi di Recanati. In 1776, at 65, she was appointed Chair of Experimental Physics at the Bologna Institute of Sciences. She died two years later. Read more...

Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier was born in Montbrison, France to a noble family. She was sent to a convent at the age of 3 after her mother died. At 12, she returned home and served as her father’s hostess. In the following year, to prevent her from marrying a 50 years old man, her father arranged for her to marry his 28 years old colleague, the French nobleman and scientist Antoine Lavoisier. In 1775, when she was 17, the couple moved to Paris, where her husband dedicated his time to chemistry and built a laboratory in their house. Paulze-Lavoisier became interested in her husband’s activities and started helping him with his work. At first, she made notes, documented research records, and sketched diagrams of the experimental designs. To widen her knowledge, she took chemistry lessons with her husband’s colleagues, and to draw the instruments more accurately, she took art lessons with the painter Jacques-Louis David. Her illustrations were an essential element that helped his peers to understand the experiment’s methods and results. Paulze-Lavoisier mastered French, English, and Latin, and she translated works of foreign chemists and added commentaries for her husband’s use. It was crucial for his need to be updated on current developments and imply the discoveries in his experiments. Paulze-Lavoisier was a vital part of her husband’s experiments, and although she received only formal credit for her drawings, she played a significant role in conducting the experiments and editing the published reports. With their joined forces, the Lavoisiers redefined the field of chemistry. In 1789, they published the Traité Élémentaire de chimie, which contains 13 of Paulze-Lavoisier’s original sketches. Today it’s recognized as the first modern chemistry textbook. In that same year, the French Revolution erupted, and the Lavoisiers, who were nobility, were marked as traitors. In 1794, her husband was imprisoned. She fought to release him. Presenting his accomplishments and contributions as a scientist, but despite her efforts, he was convicted of treason and executed. After her husband’s death, the new government confiscated all her money and property, including the laboratory equipment and notebooks. Despite the difficulties, 36 years old Paulze-Lavoisier began to gather enough materials and compile them into an eight-volume collection of her husband’s experiments and conclusions titled Mémoires de Chimie. The book was published in 1805 and has secured her husband’s legacy of defining the principles of the new chemistry. Afterward, Paulze-Lavoisier’s scientific activities came to an end, and she spent the rest of her life as a socialite, trying to maintain the salon-style way of living as it was before the revolution. She died at the age of 78. Read more...

Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, which is now part of what is called the Jurassic Coast. Her only education in reading and writing came from attending Sunday school. In her childhood, she and her brother helped her father on his fossil-hunting expeditions and sold their finding to supplement their family income. In 1810, when she was 11 years old, her father died, and she and her brother continued collecting and selling fossils from a stand they set up by a local inn. Most of their collection included invertebrate fossils such as ammonite and belemnite shells. In 1811, Anning’s brother found a 4-foot skull, and within a few months, she found the rest of the 17-feet-long skeleton of what will be later named an Ichthyosaurus, or fish lizard, that lived in the area 201-194 million years ago. The selling of the fossils was the family’s only income, and she devoted herself to this challenging task. It included a daily search on the beach, especially after tides, walking miles under the cliffs, and searching for objects that could lead to a hidden fossil, under the risk of being crushed by fallen masses. She furthered her research beyond the seashore, read any scientific literature she could find, and dissected modern animals to understand better the anatomy of the fossils she had collected. She also wrote her notes and observations on the fossils and made accurate drawings of each and every one of them. Despite Anning’s hard and life-threatening work, the fossils she found and sold were not enough to make ends meet, so in 1820, one of her major clients, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch, purchased several specimens to support her financially and even auctioned off his collection and donated the proceeds to Anning and her family. In 1823, at 24, she uncovered the first complete Plesiosaurus skeleton. After it got authenticated by various scholars, Anning began to receive recognition from the scientific community. Within three years, she saved enough money to open Anning’s Fossil Depot shop. Many geologists and fossil collectors from the UK and abroad came to her shop to view and purchase her findings; some of them accompanied her on her fossil-hunting tours, and many of them did not credit her for her work after they published their conclusions on the specimens she excavated. Over the next decade, Anning uncovered numerous science-changing discoveries, including a flying reptile called a Dimorphodon, which was the first pterosaur specimen found outside German, a long-necked marine reptile called a plesiosaur, and a fish called Squaloraja, which was a member of a transition group between sharks and rays. She was also one of the first to search for coprolites, fossilized poo, which helped analyze dinosaurs’ nutrition. Although she was not admitted into the Geological Society (which did not include women until 1904), many scholars recognized her contribution to the field and came to her help. In 1835, after losing her life savings in a bad investment, her friend and client, the geologist and paleontologist William Buckland, urged the British government and the British Association for the Advancement of Science to give her a civil list pension as a recognition of her contributions to the science of geology. The yearly £25 she received was her only financial security. In 1846, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the Geological Society raised money to help her with the medical expenses. She died at the age of 47 after dedicating her life to the science of paleontology. Her discoveries provided evidence for species’ extinction and helped develop the theory of evolution. Read more...

Margaret Thatcher was born in Lincolnshire, England, to a middle-class family of shopkeepers. Growing up, she was introduced to conservative politics by her father, a member of the town’s council, and formed her political tendencies and inspired her to become a Politician. She attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and later Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School. At 18, she got a scholarship to study at Somerville College, Oxford, earning a degree in chemistry. There, she was active in school politics, serving as president of the Conservative Association. After graduation, she moved to Colchester, where she worked as a research chemist. In 1950, at the age of 25, she relocated to London and made her first bid for public office, running as the Labour candidate for the Dartford parliamentary seat. Though she lost the election both in 1950 and in 1951, her nomination increased the local Conservative votes. At the time, she worked at J. Lyons & Co food company as a food scientist, testing the quality of ice creams and cake fillings. In 1951, she married Denis Thatcher and took some time off politics to study law. She passed the bar exams in 1954 while taking care of her newborn twins. Later on, she worked for a few years as a tax attorney. In 1959, 34 years old Thatcher made another attempt to enter the House of Commons, successfully winning the Conservative seat of Finchley district. Once in, she steadily climbed within the party. Within two years, she was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, becoming the youngest woman to receive such a post. In 1969, she was named chief opposition spokesman on education and then secretary of state for education and science. In this position, she advocated for making academic education available for working-class children. In 1975, at the age of 50, Thatcher, who was still low ranked in the party hierarchy, was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, becoming the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK and the first to serve as the opposition leader in the House of Commons. In the following year, she gave the Britain Awake speech, in which she attacked the Soviet Union and its policies, for which she was called the Iron Lady by the Soviet press, a nickname that stuck with her for the rest of her life. In 1979, Thatcher led the Conservative Party to win the general elections, becoming the first female prime minister in the UK. At the time, England was in political and economic turmoil, unemployment on the rise, and the government was nearly bankrupt. In her first term, she constructed a series of measures to eliminate governmental regulations and advance the independence of individuals from the state: increasing taxes on spending, privatizing state-owned industries such as public transport, social housing, water, gas, and electricity, reducing governmental expenses on social services including education and health care, and eliminating regulations of businesses. The result was a collapse of the manufacturing industry that led to an increase in unemployment by more than 20%. Thatcher’s popularity was in decline, but her firm approach during the Falklands War in 1982, in which Britain managed to retake the territory from Argentina, enabled her to win the 1983 elections. In her second term, Thatcher focused on applying legal restrictions on trade unions. She also formed an alliance with the US against the Soviet Union, presided over the independence of Zimbabwe, and opposed international sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Though she encountered criticism for her actions, she managed to gain popularity by supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and keeping the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, which manifested in another victory in the 1987 elections. In her third term, Thatcher led a hostile approach toward the European Community (EC), believing that the European Union should be a free-trade area and not a political entity. This approach against the EC divided the party. This, and the violent street outbreaks caused by the implementation of fixed-rate local tax led to the resignation of numerous party members. In 1990, Thatcher won the party elections by a small margin and decided to resign as the party’s leader and prime minister. She remained a member of Parliament and continued to influence the party’s politics until the 1992 elections. Afterward, she received a life peerage as Baroness that entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After retiring at 67, Thatcher began to write about her experiences as prime minister and a woman in politics. In addition, she gave lectures and established the Thatcher Foundation to promote political and economic freedom. Thatcher retired from public speaking after suffering a series of minor strokes in 2000, which led to progressive dementia. She died at the age of 87. Read more...