Women are often seen as powerhouses because they can multitask, create, do, and manage it all at once. That’s also why they’ve come up with so many creative ideas, inventions, and discoveries throughout history, but the past hasn’t been exactly kind to them.
So many women created things and then had to watch while someone else stole all the credit. That’s why we decided to shine a spotlight on the ladies behind the amazing things we use in our lives, so they can finally get the acclaim they deserve.
#21
Camille Claudel was a sculptor who worked as Auguste Rodin's assistant, collaborator, and lover, but her career was long overshadowed by his.
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An American inventor named Maria Beasley successfully marketed 15 creations like a barrel-making machine, foot warmer, and even an anti-derailment device for trains. These inventions earned her at least $20,000 a year at a time when most working women earned $3 a day.
In 1880, she created something that would later save many lives at sea: the life raft. The ones on boats were just planks of wood with hollow floats and no guardrails, but she built one that could withstand fire and water while staying compact and easy to launch. Despite this amazing invention, she was still not taken seriously, and the 1880 US Census listed Maria as an "unemployed housewife."
#22
British chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin was studying DNA at King’s College London when, in 1951, she produced a groundbreaking image of its structure. A colleague showed it to James Watson and Francis Crick without her permission, and it became the turning point in their research. When they published their discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953, they barely mentioned her, and the pair went on to win the Nobel Prize after Franklin had passed of ovarian cancer, so their names remain tied to one of science’s biggest breakthroughs.
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#23
Katherine Johnson was an African American mathematician at NASA’s Langley Research Center whose calculations helped launch America’s first spaceflights, and astronauts trusted her to check their numbers before takeoff. Her sexist supervisor pushed for her male coauthor to take credit for their key report, but he refused because she had done most of the work.
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#24
In 1810, Shaker weaver Tabitha Babbitt watched two men struggling with a pit saw and came up with the idea of a circular saw, which was used in a Shaker sawmill by 1813. Because of her beliefs, she didn’t want to profit from it, and a few years later two men read about her invention and patented it themselves.
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Every single woman in this list has contributed something amazing to history, and Sarah Breedlove, also known as Madam C. J. Walker, is no less. She became the first self-made millionaire in the U.S. through her line of hair care products designed specifically for African American women.
When she was working as a laundress, she figured out that she and many other black women struggled with hair loss and scalp diseases because of the water and harsh ingredients in hair products. That’s what inspired her invention, and she also used her money and status to employ thousands of African American women, as well as make donations to schools, orphanages, and retirement homes throughout her life.
#25
Astronomer Vera Rubin was rejected by Princeton for being a woman, but went on to produce the first solid evidence of dark matter while studying how stars orbit in galaxies. It took her over a decade to convince other scientists, and she never got a Nobel Prize, while Fritz Zwicky, who first theorized it, was widely honored.
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#26
English botanist Anna Atkins created the first book made entirely of photographs, “Photographs of British Algae,” using the cyanotype process in the 1840s. For about 150 years, the credit went to William Henry Fox Talbot’s later book, and her work was sometimes attributed to scientist John Herschel or to an “anonymous amateur.”
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#27
In 1868, Margaret Knight invented a machine that made square-bottomed paper bags, but while she was building the iron model needed for a patent, a man named Charles Annan stole her idea and patented it. She sued and won the rights to her invention in 1871.
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Women have accomplished so much throughout history that most of us never even knew about. It’s a tragedy that so many accomplishments were quashed or stolen by someone who didn’t deserve them. That’s why it’s important to know these ladies' names and appreciate all the effort they put into creating things that are still useful to us today.
We’d love to hear any examples you might have of women inventors. Do share your stories and opinions in the comments.
#28
French hairdresser Marcel Grateau is often credited with the hair straightener, but Ada Harris patented one first in 1893, while Grateau was actually known for the curling iron.
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#29
Mary Anderson came up with windshield wipers while riding a streetcar in the snow and patented them in 1903, but every company she approached rejected her invention. By the time cars made wipers essential, her patent had expired, and inventor Robert Kearns later became famous for his version.
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#30
Some say Einstein's wife, Mileva Maric, was an uncredited collaborator in his theories (I say *his theories* with some restraint).
She was a fellow student of his at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, also studying physics and passionate about it. This was in a time where women were generally prohibited to study, and she had good scores too.
She got pregnant with his kid, and became basically his wife-servant (I am not exaggerating, you can find his list of demands of her online). Because of her new wife-mother role she failed her exams and didn't finish her studies. To be fair he was very mysogynistic, there is plenty evidence of that, so stealing her work is something that would come easy to someone that rotten (again, not exaggerating.. of this we do have proof).
In 1907 he did steal what work she done with Paul Habicht and published & patented their work under only the names of the guys.
There is some evidence she at least contributed to the relativity theory, but it is unclear how much, and historians don't seem to be digging into this enough. Einstein admitted she did ALL his mathematics, so using her own ideas or at the very least augmenting his is not that farfetched. She could have done it all or just 10%, she still deserved to be credited AND to join him in winning the Nobel prize.
Maybe historians consider it blasphemy to question Einstein and try to frame it as not true (it's not like a mysogynist would admit in letters to his like minded friends that he stole her ideas), and that is possibly the saddest example anyone could give.
She was a fellow student of his at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, also studying physics and passionate about it. This was in a time where women were generally prohibited to study, and she had good scores too.
She got pregnant with his kid, and became basically his wife-servant (I am not exaggerating, you can find his list of demands of her online). Because of her new wife-mother role she failed her exams and didn't finish her studies. To be fair he was very mysogynistic, there is plenty evidence of that, so stealing her work is something that would come easy to someone that rotten (again, not exaggerating.. of this we do have proof).
In 1907 he did steal what work she done with Paul Habicht and published & patented their work under only the names of the guys.
There is some evidence she at least contributed to the relativity theory, but it is unclear how much, and historians don't seem to be digging into this enough. Einstein admitted she did ALL his mathematics, so using her own ideas or at the very least augmenting his is not that farfetched. She could have done it all or just 10%, she still deserved to be credited AND to join him in winning the Nobel prize.
Maybe historians consider it blasphemy to question Einstein and try to frame it as not true (it's not like a mysogynist would admit in letters to his like minded friends that he stole her ideas), and that is possibly the saddest example anyone could give.
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#31
Alfred Hitchcock never did a movie with out his wife, Alma Reville, reading and okaying the script first. He had his issues, but he was very open about how important his wife was in his process.
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#32
One could argue that the first superhero story was ***The Scarlet Pimpernel***, which was written by a woman.
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#33
Esther Lederberg was treated like a lab assistant by her husband, Joshua Lederberg. She discovered the lambda bacteriophage and collaborated with him on other major advances in microbiology. He went on to win a Nobel Prize, while she took an untenured position at Stanford even though she felt overqualified.
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#34
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium. Her supervisor, Henry Norris Russell, talked her into treating the conclusion cautiously, then later published a paper that endorsed and expanded on her findings.
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#35
Nettie Stevens discovered the role of X and Y chromosomes in determining biological sex. Edmund Beecher Wilson published similar work around the same time.
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#36
Zelda Fitzgerald, a writer and dancer married to F. Scott Fitzgerald, saw her own words, diary entries, and letters end up in his novels, including a famous Daisy line in “The Great Gatsby.” When she published her own novel about their marriage in 1932, he was furious because he wanted the material for himself, and its failure hurt her fragile mental health.
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#37
Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, worked with inventor Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine in 1843 and wrote detailed notes on how the machine could solve complex problems and even compose music. Those ideas are seen as the earliest form of computer programming, yet her role is still often downplayed.
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#38
It is believed that Marcel Duchamp stole his ‘Fountain’ urinal/toilet artwork from the artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. This is one of the most famous artworks in the world, and is cited as the beginning of modern art in America. So it’s a pretty massive deal if he did indeed steal it, which is probably like 90% certain that he did.
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#39
El Dorado Jones, nicknamed the “Iron Woman,” ran a metalworking factory that only hired women over 40, and in 1917 she invented what was described as the first successful airplane engine muffler. It reduced noise without cutting power, but she never got funding to manufacture it, partly because of her famous distrust of men.
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#40
Adeline D. T. Whitney, an author of books for children and adults, patented an early version of alphabet blocks in 1882. Her blocks came in different shapes and sizes and could form letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
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