1. Sacagawea
May 1788 – December 20, 1812, also Sakakawea or Sacajawea, was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition achieve each of its chartered mission objectives exploring the Louisiana Purchase. With the expedition, between 1804 and 1806, she traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, established cultural contacts with Native American populations, and researched natural history.
2. Lucretia Mott
January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880, was an American Quaker, abolitionist, a women's rights activist, and asocial reformer. She helped write the Declaration of Sentiments during the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.
3. Florence Nightinggale
12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910, was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses trained by her during the Crimean War, where she organised the tending to wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a highly favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture.
4. Helene De Pourtales
28 April 1868 New York – 2 November 1945, Geneva, born as Helen Barbey, was a Swiss sailor who competed in the 1900 Summer Olympics. She was a member of the Swiss boat Lérina, which won the gold medal in the first race of 2-3 ton class and silver medal in the second race of 2-3 ton class. She also participated in the open class but did not finish.
5. Harriet Tubman
Born Araminta Ross, 1822 – March 10, 1913, was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and, during the American Civil War, a Union spy. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved families and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.
6. Harriet Quimby
May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912, was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911, she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. In 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
7. Ann Frank
12 June 1929 – February or March 1945, was a German-born diarist and writer. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, which documents her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
8. Harriet Beecher Stowe
June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and author. She came from a famous religious family and is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). It depicts the harsh life for African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and Great Britain.
9. Sojourner Truth
Born Isabella ("Bell") Baumfree; c.?1797 – November 26, 1883, was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, in 1828 she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
10. Helen Keller
June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968, was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.
11. Marie Curie
7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934, born Maria Salomea Sklodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.
12. Eleanor Roosevelt
October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962, was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, holding the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, and served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.
13. Rosa Parks
February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005, was an African American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
14. Benazi Bhutto
June 21, 1953 – December 27, 2007, was the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan, serving two non-consecutive terms in 1988–90 and then 1993–96. In 1982, three years after her father's execution, 29-year-old Benazir Bhutto became the chairperson of the PPP, a political party, making her the first woman in Pakistan to head a major political party. In 1988, she became the first woman to be elected as the head of an Islamic state's government; she also remains Pakistan's only female prime minister.
15. Alice Walker
February 9, 1944 - is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote Meridian and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, among other works.
16. Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852, was a British mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.
17. Sonia Sotomayor
June 25, 1954 - is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic heritage, its third female justice, and its twelfth Roman Catholic justice. Sotomayor, along with John Roberts and Elena Kagan, is one of the youngest justices on the Supreme Court.
18. Grace Hopper
December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992, was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944, invented the first compiler for a computer programming language, and was one of those who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages.
19. Sally Ride
May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012, was an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987.
20. Michelle Bachelet
Born 29 September 1951 - Michelle Bachelet is a Chilean Socialist Party politician who has served as the President of Chile since 11 March 2014. She previously served as President from 2006 to 2010, becoming the first woman in her country to do so. After leaving the presidency, she was appointed the first executive director of the newly created United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).
21. Tegla Loroupe
9 May 1973 - is a Kenyan long-distance track and road runner. She is also a global spokeswoman for peace, women's rights and education. Loroupe holds the world records for 20, 25 and 30 kilometres and previously held the world marathon record. She is the three-time World Half-Marathon champion. Loroupe was also the first woman from Africa to win the New York City Marathon, which she has won twice. She has won marathons in London, Boston, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Berlin, Rome, and many of other cities.
22. Ellen Ochoa
May 10, 1958 - is a former astronaut and current Director of the Johnson Space Center(as of this writing). Ochoa became director of the center upon retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993.
23. Malala Yousafzai
12 July 1997 - is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai's advocacy has since grown into an international movement.
24. Mae C Jemison
October 17, 1956 - is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. After her medical education and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985 to 1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps.
Note: All information relating to these special women, including images, are from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The contents and images are considered to be in the "Public Domain", however see the original Wikipedia listing for any copyright issues as well as more detailed information regarding each woman's profile and biography.