This selection of Times obituaries revisits the lives of 125 women who have all, in their own way, played an important part in women’s educational, professional, social, cultural and emotional journey over the best part of two centuries. The anthology starts with the obituary of 91-year-old pioneering mathematician and scientist Mary Somerville (d. 1872) and concludes with that of 110-year-old concert pianist and Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer (d. 2014). In between come a formidable trio of later scientists, a quintet of great pianists, campaigners, reformers, suffragists, an anti-apartheid campaigner, and a Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist. Interspersed are women prime ministers, actresses, novelists, singers, aviators, a mountaineer, a Channel swimmer, war correspondents, ballerinas, sportswomen, botanists, American First Ladies, iconic members of the British royal family, and many, many more.
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