Not a mere Better Half – I!

On record they are called as better half, however, never treated as one but at the end the achievement what count. These women showed that, time, age, disability and finance nothing came in their way while they pursued their dream and achieved whatever they dreamt. On international Woman’s Day, my tribute to some extra-ordinary lots.

Author

Anne Frank (1929 - 1945)

Anne may not have any real accomplishments of her out but she’s certainly one of the most famous women in history, even if she was just barely a woman when she died. Her diary, Diary of a Young Girl, has been adapted into numerous films and plays and has been read by millions of people world wide.

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

First deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree and an Alabama Woman’s Hall of Fame inductee. Throughout her life, Keller was a supporter of women’s suffrage, labour rights and various other causes.

Margaret Fuller

She was the first woman allowed to use the Harvard library. Her work and support of prison reform, emancipation of slaves and a woman’s right to education and employment inspired others, including Susan B. Anthony, to work for the same things.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1986 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. She was the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize

Jhumpa Lahiri (1967)

Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake, was adapted into the popular film of the same name.

Arundhati Roy (1961)

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who was best known for the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction winning novel The God of Small Things and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.

Kiran Desai (1971)

Kiran Desai is an Indian author. She is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.

Healer

Mother Theresa (1910-1997)

Perhaps the most famous woman of the twentieth century is a small, frail-looking nun by the name of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became much better known to the world simply as Mother Theresa. Establishing the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with just 13 members, eventually it would grow to a staff of 4,000 nuns who would run dozens of orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers worldwide.

Florence Nightingale ( 1820 - 1910)

Considered to be the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale established her school of nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London in 1860, an event thought to have laid the foundation for modern nursing. Today, nurses take the “Nightingale Pledge”, named in her honor and International Nurses Day is celebrated each year on her birthday.

Scientist

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Born Maria Skladowska in Warsaw, Poland,  Marie Curie was to seriously test the old adage that a woman’s place was in the home. A largely penniless student who worked as a governess and tutor while pursuing her dream of becoming a physicist  What makes Madame Currie so remarkable - besides being the first woman to win two Nobel Prize in science.

 Barbara McClintock (1902 - 1992)

One of the world’s most distinguished cryogenticists. American geneticist and Nobel laureate, most noted for her discovery that genes can transfer their positions on chromosomes, which is important for the understanding of hereditary processes.

!!!A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. - D. H. Lawrence!!!