importantwomensbirthdays

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Ursula Mamlok

Ursula Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923. Mamlok fled Germany in 1939 due to Nazi persecution, and ultimately settled in the US, where she became a successful composer. She wrote more than 70 pieces, including vocal, orchestral, chamber, solo instrument, and children's music, and she was significantly influenced by Schönberg’s 12-tone-method. Mamlok taught composition for over forty years, and continued composing into her old age. She won numerous awards, including the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Ursula Mamlok died in 2016 at the age of 93.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Irene Chou

Irene Chou was born in 1924 in Shanghai, China. Chou was a central figure in Hong Kong's New Ink Art Movement. Her artwork combined traditional Chinese ink painting techniques with abstract expressionist elements. Chou won several awards in her career, including the Hong Kong Urban Council Fine Arts Award and the Hong Kong Artists' Guild's Artist of the Year Award. Her work can be found in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Irene Chou died in 2011 at the age of 87.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Paris Pişmiş

Paris Pişmiş was born in 1911 in Istanbul, Turkey. Over the course of her scientific career, Pişmiş published more than 130 articles on astrophysics topics, focusing mainly on problems of galactic structure. She made some of the earliest observations of young stellar clusters, and discovered twenty open clusters and three globular clusters. Pişmiş worked at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for over fifty years, helping to develop the field of astronomy in Mexico and by editing astronomical journals by introducing Fabry-Perot interferometry in the country.

Paris Pişmiş died in 1999 at the age of 88.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Ayobami Adebayo

Ayobami Adebayo was born in 1988 in Lagos, Nigeria. Adebayo's debut novel Stay With Me was a bestseller that won the 9mobile prize for literature and the Prix Les Afriques. Her novel A Spell of Good Things was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Adebayo's work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and she was selected as a judge for the 2025 Booker Prize.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Gailene Stock

Ballet dancer and teacher Gailene Stock was born in 1946 in Ballarat, Victoria. Stock began dancing at the age of four. She contracted polio at eight years old and was in an iron frame for eighteen months. At fourteen, Stock was in a car accident that left her in a coma for three days. Yet after both of these tragedies, she returned to dancing, and went on to enjoy a successful career. Stock performed as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. In 1999, she became Director of the Royal Ballet School, a position she held for fifteen years. Within Stock's first three years as director, graduate employment rates rose from 48% to 96%. In 2013, she received the Governors of the Royal Ballet Gold Medal and was made a CBE.

Gailene Stock died in 2014 at the age of 68.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Jennifer Rupp

Materials scientist Jennifer Rupp was born in Germany in 1980. Rupp's research area is solid state materials for sustainable energy storage and conversion. This includes research into battery design, photo-generated fuels, and implantable energy technology. In 2017, Rupp won the Science Award Electrochemistry from Volkswagen and BASF for her work on energy storage systems. The following year, she won the Merck Award. Rupp holds more than 25 patents and has published over 100 papers.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Conny Aerts

Conny Aerts was born in 1966 in Brasschaat, Belgium. Aerts is considered a pioneer of asteroseismology. She has developed mathematical methods for identifying non-radial stellar oscillations in spectroscopic data. Aerts' research encompasses stellar astrophysics, including variable stars as well as stellar structure and evolution. She has won several awards for her work, including the 2012 Francqui Prize, the 2022 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, and the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Julia Smith

Composer and music scholar Julia Smith was born in 1905 in Denton, Texas. Smith is best known for her six operas, and for her biography of Aaron Copeland. She also composed pieces for orchestra, chorus, organ, voice, and piano. Smith was an advocate for women in music. She edited a directory of American women composers, and served as chair of American Women Composers.

Julia Smith died in 1989 at the age of 84.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Marjory Stephenson

Marjory Stephenson was born in 1885 in Burwell, Cambridgeshire, England. Stephenson was a biochemist who made significant contributions to the study of bacterial metabolism and worked to promote microbiology as a discipline. The 1930 publication of her book, Bacterial Metabolism, gained her both national and international recognition. Stephenson played a key role in the founding of the Society for General Microbiology, and later served as the organization's president. In 1945, she was elected to the Royal Society.

Marjory Stephenson died in 1948 at the age of 63.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Ruth Haring

Chess player Ruth Haring was born in 1955 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Haring competed in her first Chess Olympiad in 1974, and went on to compete in four more. In 2009, she was elected to the US Chess Executive Board. Two years later, Haring became president of US Chess, a position she held until 2015. Under Haring's leadership, the organization grew from 75,876 members to 85,867. She also served as FIDE zonal president for the United States and a member of the FIDE Verification Commission.

Ruth Haring died in 2018 at the age of 63.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Willa Brown

Willa Brown was born in 1906 in Glasgow, Kentucky. Brown was a pioneering aviator who worked tirelessly to integrate the field. She earned her pilot license in 1938, and a commercial license the following year. She was a founding member of the first Black aviators' group, the National Airmen's Association of America. Brown and her husband, Cornelius Coffey, co-founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics. As the director of the school, she played a key role in training more than 200 students who later became Tuskegee Airmen. In 1942, Brown became the first African-American officer in the Civil Air Patrol.

Willa Brown died in 1992 at the age of 86.

Image source: National Archives

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Xiaowei Zhuang

Xiaowei Zhuang was born in 1972 in Rugao, China. Zhuang is a biophysicist whose work focuses on single-molecule biology and bioimaging. She works to develop imaging techniques for the quantitative study of biological systems. Zhuang developed the stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, or STORM, method. This became one of the most widely used methods for super resolution imaging and a critical tool for furthering the understanding of molecular structures within cells. Zhuang has won numerous awards for her work, including the NAS Award in Molecular Biology, the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, and the Dreyfus Prize. In 2024, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Sawako Ariyoshi

Sawako Ariyoshi was born in 1931 in Wakayama City, Japan. Ariyoshi was one of Japan's most prolific and popular postwar writers. Her writing largely explored the lives women, but focused on topics outside of romantic love. Airyoshi wrote bestselling novels, as well as short stories, plays, and nonfiction. Her story "Jiuta" was a finalist for the Akutagawa Prize. Ariyoshi's novel The River Ki sold more than 3 million copies, and her novel The Twilight Years sold two million copies before becoming a paperback. In 1970, she won the prestigious Japanese Literature Grand Prix. Ariyoshi's work has been translated into twelve languages.

Sawako Ariyoshi died in 1984 at the age of 53.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Elena Kaliská

Elena Kaliská was born in 1972 in what is now Zvolen, Slovakia. Kaliská competed in the canoe slalom at four summer Olympics, winning the gold medal in the kayak singles event in both 2004 and 2008. She also won a gold medal at the 2005 World Championships and a silver medal at the 2007 World Championships.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Reema Juffali

Race car driver Reema Juffali was born in 1992 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2018, Juffali became her country's first ever female racing driver, just a few months after the ban on women driving was repealed. The following year, she became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to win an international motor race. Juffali has competed in more than a hundred races, and in 2022, she started her own racing team.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Edith Green

Congresswoman Edith Green was born in 1910 in Trent, South Dakota. From 1955 until 1974, Green represented Oregon's 3rd congressional district. During her time in House of Representatives, she helped pass the National Defense Education Act as well as Lyndon B Johnson's antipoverty legislation. Green supported the Equal Pay Act of 1963 as well as early civil rights laws. She is best remembered, however, for her work in developing and in helping to pass Title IX, a legal prohibition on sex discrimination in education. Green authored and introduced the bill, and guided it through the House of Representatives.

Edith Green died in 1987 at the age of 77.

Image source: United States Congress

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Lisa Milroy

Lisa Milroy was born in 1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Milroy rose to prominence in the 1980s with paintings of everyday objects arranged in grid patterns against off-white backgrounds. The subjects of her paintings shifted over time, and she would later experiment with a less linear aesthetic. In 1989, Milroy won first prize in the John Moores Exhibition in Liverpool. In 2004, she won the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize, and the following year, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts. Milroy's work can be found in the collections of the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.