From the time that she first took up skating at age 8 to her final run on the ice, Kwan has always been on top; to this day, she is the the most decorated figure skater in American historywith two Olympic medals and five World championship titles. Here are 100 of the most influential and important women in history – both famous and lesser-known – that have changed the world.

In 2015, less than one year before her death, she published the anticipated sequel, Go Set a Watchman. She was one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and led a powerful anti-lynching crusade in the U. They wanted help disproving the law of conservation of parity (which stated that two mirrored physical systems, such as atoms, behave in identical ways and donot differentiate between left and right). Marie Stopes, advocate of birth control and sex educator, was born in Edinburgh but studied for a science degree at University College, London. Her memory is preserved by the cancer society that bears her name and continues to help terminally ill patients all over the world.After a military coup overthrew her father's government, she inherited leadership of the Pakistan People's Party .

By 1999, the first three installments of the series held the top three spots on the New York Timesbestseller list.

Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe at the White House by saying: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war,” in reference to the civil war. You can even see by people’s reactions and asking for autographs that this was a remarkable woman and achievement.

She was already a widely-known American jazz singer when, in 1958, she made history, becoming the first African American woman to win a Grammy. Crowned in 1837, she oversaw the nation and its empire throughout a remarkable period of social, technological and economic change.Too tired to give up her seat on the bus home from high school, on March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to move for a white passenger—nine months before Rosa Parks would do the same. It was later revealed that Ada’s insights into Babbage’s inventions far exceeded his own – while he saw them as mere mathematical machines that could do calculations, she recognised their potential to undergo all sorts of complex processes from governing applications to composing music. Often lacing plots exploring marriage, status and social sensibility with a distinctive irony, her works have been adapted many times in plays, films and TV series. She was also an accomplished author, known for her 1963 play, The Women, which did not feature a single male performer.