International Women's Day Inspirations Quiz

Answer: Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamar (1949-2000) was a successful Hollywood actress. Her most famous role is as Delilah in "Samson and Delilah", a movie that was released in 1949. She had a very creative and scientific mind even though she had no formal training in science. She developed an improved traffic light, and had discussions with Howard Hughes about developing a more streamlined aircraft shape that would be based on the shape of fast birds and fish. During WWII, she heard about a radio-controlled torpedo that the US had developed. Unfortunately, the radio signal could be blocked by the Germans, causing the torpedo to fail. She worked with her friend George Antheil to develop a signal that could not be blocked. The new "frequency-hopping" system was developed by synchronizing a player piano with radio signals.

Unfortunately, the technology proved too difficult to implement at the time. The US Navy did not adopt the technology on their ships until 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Flash forward to the 21st century, and Lamar's frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology is used in blue tooth and GPS technologies. She was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for this invention.

Answer: Anne McLaren

Dame Anne McLaren (1927-2007) was a British scientist who studied animal genetics. She reported the first time that fertile mouse embryos were harvested from the females, after which in vitro culturing was used before re-implanting the embryos. The embryos survived, and she published her results in the journal "Nature" in 1958.

Some feel that this was one of the most important scientific discoveries that lead to eventual successful in vitro fertilization in humans.

Answer: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) contracted polio as a child and was in a bus accident when she was 18 years old. This caused her to experience life-long pain, and change her life trajectory. Initially, she had a goal of attending medical school, but turned to art when her pain made that impossible.

As an adult, she became a member of the Mexican Communist Party, and was married to another Mexican artist, Diego Rivera. She was a portrait artist who mainly painted self-portraits that were founded in Mexican folk culture. Her work was shown at galleries in New York and Paris. The New York exhibit was considered a success, but the exhibit at the Louvre was not considered successful. Despite that, one of her paintings was purchased by the Louvre for permanent display. This purchase meant that she was the first Mexican artist to be featured at the Louvre.

Kahlo's work remained relatively unknown until long after her death. In the 1970s it was rediscovered and since the 1990s, Kamloops has been recognized as an important art figure, and a representative of Chicanos, feminists, and the LGBTQ+ movement.

Answer: Vera Rubin

Vera Rubin (1928-2016) was an astronomer who was known for advocating for and mentoring women in science. She used an image tube spectrograph that had been invented by one of her colleagues to study galactic rotation curves. Her work allowed her to discover discrepancies in the angular motion of galaxies.

This led to her giving the first evidence for dark matter. Rubin was honoured with a number of awards and medals for her work, and was made a member of a number of scientific academies as a result of her work.

Answer: Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai (b. 1997) was born the daughter of an educational activist in northwestern Pakistan. From a young age, she advocated for education for women and girls, even as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had tried to prevent girls from attending school. In 1990, Yousafzai created a blog for the BBC under a pseudonym in which she detailed her life and the restrictions she encountered while living under control of the Tehrik-i-Taliban. This was followed by a number of interviews by international journalists about her life under the extremist regime that existed at the time.

All of her activism brought unwanted attention from the Tehrik-i-Taliban. While she was on her way home after taking an exam in 2012, she and two other girls were shot by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in an assassination attempt. She was shot in the head and wasn't expected to survive. However, she did survive, and has become an international advocate for education for young women.

For her work, Yousafzai was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. The award was made for her advocacy for children and her support of the right to education for all. At the time that she received the Nobel Prize when she was just seventeen years old, she was the youngest recipient in history. Her co-recipient was with Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist from India.

Answer: Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish was born in England in 1623. She died at the age of only fifty, but accomplished a lot during her brief life. She was a poet who wrote a number of books of poetry, clearly stating that she sought fame through her writings. In fact, she published her works under her own name at a time when most women who published their work did so anonymously, or using pen names.

She published six volumes about her philosophy. One of the things that she stated in these works that was a bit controversial at the time was that men and women could likely learn as easily as one another. Cavendish also wrote twenty plays.

Although none were produced during her lifetime, some have been performed since.

Answer: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was a British woman who is known for her firsts. She was the first woman in Great Britain to become a qualified physician and surgeon. After experiencing much discrimination based on her being a woman, she eventually got into medical school using a loophole in the application procedures. She graduated and became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Britain in 1865. As a side note, Dr. James Barry was born and raised a woman, but lived his adult life as a man. He was licensed before Anderson, but was not recognized as a woman doctor.

In 1870, Anderson was elected to the first London School Board. She resigned the position in 1873. In 1874, she co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women with Sophia Jex-Blake. She later became a Dean in this school, another first because she was the first woman to become a Dean in a medical school in Britain.

Anderson also advocated for women's voting rights in Britain. In 1866, she joined the first British Women's Suffrage Committee. Her political life apexed in 1908 when she was elected mayor of Aldeburgh. She was the first female mayor elected in England.

Answer: Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper (1906-1992) earned a PhD in mathematics from Yale University in 1934. She went on to teach mathematics at Vassar College where she was made associate professor in 1941. In the early years of WWII, she tried to enlist in the US Navy, but was turned away because she was too small, and it was determined that her work as a professor of mathematics was more value to the war effort. In 1943, Hopper joined the US Naval Reserve where she was assigned to a computation project at Harvard University in 1944. When the war ended, she requested a transfer to the regular Navy, but was turned down due to her advanced age. She was 38 at the time. She remained in the Naval Reserves.

In 1949, she became a member of the team that was developing the UNIVAC I computer. She suggested developing a computer language that was based on English rather than symbols that had been used up to that point. This led to the beginning of COBOL, a computer language still in use in some contexts in the 21st century. Hopper was forced to retire at the age of 60 due to Naval regulations, but was recalled a number of times over the years. She finally retired from the Navy in 1986 at the rank of Rear Admiral.

Answer: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart (b. 1897) is considered by many to be a pioneer in American aviation. Many will know that she disappeared in 1937 on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe, but she achieved many more accomplishments for and with other women. Her first "first" for women was in 1928 when she was the first woman to be a passenger in a plane that flew across the Atlantic Ocean. The plane had been piloted by Wilmer Stultz. In 1935, Earhart successfully piloted a flight across the Atlantic, becoming the first woman to do so. This earned her the United States Distinguished Flying Cross. She was the first woman to receive this honour.

In 1935, she was hired as an advisor to the aeronautical engineering faculty at Purdue University. While there, she was also a career counselor for female students. She supported various women's causes of the time. She was a member of the National Woman's Party and strongly supported the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment that was written in 1923, but not passed into law until 1978. Earhart also wrote a number of books about aviation, including one that highlighted women in the field. Earhart disappeared in 1937 near the end of her journey to circumnavigate the globe. Despite attempts over the years, no definitive evidence of a plane crash was ever found. Since her disappearance, Earhart has been honoured with multiple honours and awards. Many references have also been made to her in various popular culture and media such as movies, television shows, and comic books.

Answer: Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was the wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When his legs were paralyzed by disease in 1921, she started giving speeches and campaigning on his behalf. Once her husband became president, she remained outspoken. She was the first First Lady to host regular press conferences, and to write articles in various media. Up until Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady, the wives of the presidents had typically taken a back seat to their husbands. They usually did not make public statements either for or against their husbands' policies. In Roosevelt's case, she was rather outspoken. She spoke her mind even when contradicting her husband's policies. This includes her support of the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans.

After her husband passed away in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to be active. She encouraged the US to join the United Nations, then when they did, she became the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights. She was responsible for overseeing the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When John F. Kennedy was president, she chaired his Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. Much of her work positively changed the lives of men and women around the world.