Category History

Born as Ishibashi Junko on September 22, 1939, in Miharu, Japan, Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain – Mount Everest. Tabei reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 16, 1975, as the leader of an all-female Japanese climbing party. In 1992, she went on to become the first woman to ascend all the Seven Summits which involves climbing the tallest peak on each of the seven continents. Tabei continued climbing even after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2012.

Tabei led the way for the women who climbed Everest after her and those who aspire to do so. Bachendri Pal is the first woman from India to summit Everest in 1984.

“Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream.”

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Born on January 3, 1831 in Naigon, Maharashtra, Savitribai Phule is regarded as the first female teacher of India. Along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai played an important role in improving women’s rights in India and founded the first girls’ school at Bhide Wada, Pune in 1848.

She helped put education on the priority list for women in India and inspired several educationists in the country.

“The lack of learning is nothing but gross bestiality. It is through the acquisition of knowledge that (he) loses his lower status and achieves the higher one.”

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Born on May 12, 1977, in Tehran, Iran, Maryam Mirzakhani was the first and the only woman to win the Fields Medal, the prestigious award in the field of mathematics. She won the award on August 13, 2014, for her work on the dynamics and geometery of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces. Mirzakhani was also the first Iranian to be honoured with the Medal. She was a professor of Mathematics at Stanford University before her untimely death due to breast cancer.

Women can achieve feats in the field of mathematics as well. Her achievement continues to inspire several young women to pursue a career in mathematics.

“I find it fascinating that you can look at the same problem from different perspectives and approach it using different methods.”

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Born on March 31, 1865, in Kalyan, India, Anandi Gopal Joshi was the first Indian female physician. She was the first woman from the then Bombay presidency to study and graduate with a degree in western medicine in the U.S.. She graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886. Joshi was inspired to become a physician following the death of her child just ten days after birth due to lack of medical care.

At a time when women’s role was confined to the kitchen, Joshi, supported by her husband, stood up to pursue higher education and inspired several women in the country to do so.

“Be grateful for challenges because… Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then (each woman and) man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilisation and mental culture.”

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Born on March 6, 1937, in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a village on the Volga River in western Russia, Tereshkova was the first and youngest woman to have flown into space. She achieved this feat on June 16, 1963, when she made the first solo mission to space aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft. Tereshkova spent almost three days in space and orbited the Earth 48 times in her 70.8 hour-long flight. Till date, Tereshkova remains the only woman in the world to have flown on a solo mission.

She paved the way for women to become astronauts, with 64 women having flown successfully to space after her.

“Once you’ve been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.”

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Born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867 as Maria Sklodowska, Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the only woman in history to win it twice. Curie was also the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her contribution to the research on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. She along with her husband Pierre Curie shared the award with Becquerel. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium.

Marie’s work paved the way for future research into radiation, which today plays a big role in treating cancer patients around the world.

“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

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