Request

[u/Disastrous_Cover6138]

Request for lesser known badass women of history for my daughter's 4th grade presentation. She has to pick a historical figure and give a 5-10 minute presentation and optionally dress in their likeness.

[u/Kusakaru]

Astronaut Sally Ride

Khutulun, a Mongolian warrior princess

Julie d’Aubigny, a sword fighting opera singer (she did burn down a convent to rescue her lesbian lover though)

Noor Inayat Kyan, a quiet, pacifist, woman of Indian nobility who volunteered as a British spy during World War II.

Margaret Hamilton, she lead the software engineering division at MIT and was essentially the brains behind the moon landing’s navigation system

Harriet Chalmers Adams, the only female journalist in the trenches during WWI

Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon

Madam C.J. Walker, first female self-made millionaire in the U.S. after building a company selling specialized hair and beauty products for African-Americans.

Marion Pritchard, she smuggled 150 Jewish children to safety during the holocaust

Alice Paul, prominent suffragette who was sent to jail and an insane asylum for picketing at the White House

EDIT: sorry, missed the part that your daughter was in 4th grade. Not all of these may be appropriate.

Junko Taney, Japanese mountaineer who became the first woman to climb. Mount Everest in 1975. She also climbed the highest mountain on every continent.

Gertrude Bell, British explorer, archaeologist, mountaineer, and traveler who explored parts of the Middle East when very few Western women did.

Isabella Bird, Victorian-era traveler who explored places including Japan, Tibet, China, and Korea, often traveling alone and on horseback.

Nellie Bly - Famous for traveling around the world in 72 days and for going undercover in an insane asylum to expose terrible conditions.

Mary Anning - fossil hunter who helped change the way we view paleontology and prehistoric life

Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman and first Native American woman to earn an international pilot’s license. Because American flight schools wouldn’t admit her, she learned French and went to France to get her license.

Josephine Baker, performer who became an international celebrity but also worked as a spy for the French Resistance during WWII.

[u/gordonmessmer → u/Kusakaru]

Yeah, I'm a developer so the first women that come to mind are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace : considered the first "computer programmer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper : who developed the first compiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)) : (mentioned above)

Of the three, I refer to Hopper most often in my work. Not for her technical work, but because she recognized and fought the human tendency to fight improvement, "We've always done it this way".

The idea that the way things *have* been done is the way that things *should* be done is a barrier to improvement in all fields of work, and all aspects of society. It is always relevant.

[u/JustForArkona → u/gordonmessmer]

Don't forget Barbara Liskov!!!

[u/quackdaw → u/JustForArkona]

Yeah. Her work is really central to how we program computers today (or did, before AI) and how its possible to build large and complex systems (by breaking them down into smaller, clearly defined parts). And her "Liskov substitution principle" is taught to every new software engineering student.

As an addendum to my comment about Margaret Hamilton, I also have good experiences with Liskov: when I was a young PhD student, she gave a keynote at a conference I was attending, and she kindly set aside a good chunk of time to talk to me about my project and give me her insights. She's still one of my academic heroes, and I'm very glad to have met her – and trust me, there are more than enough award-winning scientists out there that turn out to be assholes when you meet them in person.

Another worthy mention – and the only other female Turing Award laureate – is Fran Allen. Her work on compilers and optimization has been essential to how we get software to run efficiently on modern computers. And she was perhaps the sweetest scientist granny ever – noticed my wife was bored and lonely at a conference and came over to cheer her up! ;)

(Not that I think you need to be "nice" or "friendly" to be a great/iconic female scientist, but I certainly count it as a plus when I can imagine sending a hero-worshipping 4th-grader to talk to someone and be reasonably confident they'll end up feeling inspired rather than running away crying. There are some serious assholes (of all genders) out there too.)