Discover the Women of the Hall

These are the Inductees of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Select any of the women to discover their stories and learn how they have influenced other women and this country.

Achievements Year Born Where Born Year Inducted Last Name
Year Born: to
Birth State or Country: or
Year Inducted: to
First Letter of Last Name: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Inductee Name Achievements Born Where Born Inducted More

Lillian Moller Gilbreth Science 1878 California 1995

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Year Honored: 1995
Birth: 1878 - 1972
Born In: California
Achievements: Science

Industrial engineer and expert in motion studies, Gilbreth was a pioneer in the relationship between engineering and human relations. She convinced managers that worker-efficiency is the result of the quality of the work environment.


Anne Dallas Dudley Humanities 1876 Tennessee 1995

Anne Dallas Dudley

Year Honored: 1995
Birth: 1876 - 1955
Born In: Tennessee
Achievements: Humanities

Political activist central to the campaign to pass the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Serving as National Campaign Director as well as in her home state of Tennessee, she led a march of 2,000 women in the South’s first suffrage parade in 1914.


Mary McLeod Bethune Education 1875 South Carolina 1973

Mary McLeod Bethune

Year Honored: 1973
Birth: 1875 - 1955
Born In: South Carolina
Achievements: Education

African American teacher who, with only $1.50, began a school to help educate young African American women. After developing it into a college, she became a powerful leader, and through her leadership of the National Council of Negro Women, worked to end discrimination and increase opportunities for African Americans.


Katharine Dexter McCormick Humanities, Philanthropy 1875 Michigan 1998

Katharine Dexter McCormick

Year Honored: 1998
Birth: 1875 - 1967
Born In: Michigan
Achievements: Humanities, Philanthropy

Co-founder (with Carrie Chapman Catt) of the League of Women Voters in 1920, after ratification of the 19th Amendment. A graduate of MIT in 1904, she funded MIT’s first on-campus residence for women. She devoted her late husband’s wealth to contraceptive research and her own resources and energy to opening up doors for women in science and engineering.


Rose O'Neill 1874 2019

Rose O'Neill

Year Honored: 2019
Birth: 1874 - 1944
Achievements:

Rose O’Neill was a well-known artist, suffragist, and businesswoman. In 1896, O’Neill got one of her cartoons published in Truth Magazine, and thus earned the title of “America’s First Woman Cartoonist.” The next year, she was hired byPuck Magazine as the first woman cartoonist on its all-male staff. She remained the only woman staffer for six more years, and hundreds of her illustrations for Puck depicted themes of women’s empowerment. Most famous for her Kewpies comic strip, O’Neill produced work for more than 50 magazine publishing companies, wrote and illustrated short stories, poems, children’s books, and novels, marched in New York suffrage parades, donated her art for use in the National Woman Suffrage Association’s suffrage posters and postcards, and participated in many fundraising activities for the suffrage cause.


Willa Cather Arts 1873 Virginia 1988

Willa Cather

Year Honored: 1988
Birth: 1873 - 1947
Born In: Virginia
Achievements: Arts

Newspaperwoman and editor who became an outstanding novelist with the publication of O Pioneers in 1913. Cather went on to write other great novels and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. Her well-known works include My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop.


Mary Engle Pennington Science 1872 Tennessee 2002

Mary Engle Pennington

Year Honored: 2002
Birth: 1872 - 1952
Born In: Tennessee
Achievements: Science

Chemist and refrigeration expert Mary Engle Pennington saved thousands of lives by creating national standards for milk and dairy inspection and improved the safety and convenience of refrigerated and frozen foods. She was also instrumental in developing safe and sanitary methods for the storage and handling of poultry, fish, and eggs, contributing techniques that solved humidity control problems, insulation and ventilation issues.


Florence Sabin Science 1871 Colorado 1973

Florence Sabin

Year Honored: 1973
Birth: 1871 - 1953
Born In: Colorado
Achievements: Science

First woman graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the first woman to teach there. A talented anatomist and researcher, Sabin performed pioneering work in embryology, the lymphatic system and tuberculosis.


Alice Hamilton Science 1869 Indiana 1973

Alice Hamilton

Year Honored: 1973
Birth: 1869 - 1970
Born In: Indiana
Achievements: Science

Physician pathologist who specialized in industrial diseases. Hamilton helped save workers’ lives by forcing reforms in the workplace and protection from dangers such as lead poisoning.


Lillian Wald Science 1867 Ohio 1993

Lillian Wald

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1867 - 1940
Born In: Ohio
Achievements: Science

Nurse who organized the public health nursing service and the Henry Street Settlement in New York City to meet the needs of the urban poor. Wald created public health nursing services for many groups, and established the Public Health Nurses, known today as Visiting Nurse Service.


Madam C. J. Walker Business 1867 Louisiana 1993

Madam C. J. Walker

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1867 - 1919
Born In: Louisiana
Achievements: Business

Sara Breedlove, a Black entrepreneur considered the first African American woman to become a millionaire. She did this by devising a hair care and grooming system for African Americans and pioneered a door-to-door sales approach. The daughter of former slaves, Walker became an advocate for positive social change as well as a philanthropist.


Rebecca Talbot Perkins Humanities 1866 New York 2009

Rebecca Talbot Perkins

Year Honored: 2009
Birth: 1866 - 1956
Born In: New York
Achievements: Humanities

In 1927, a time when very few agencies existed to promote adoption, Rebecca Talbot Perkins joined with the Alliance of Women’s Clubs of Brooklyn to create The Rebecca Talbot Perkins Adoption Society. Later known as Talbot Perkins Children’s Services, the organization provided foster care and adoption services to countless families across the country for 75 years. Throughout her lifetime, Perkins was active in various charitable and civic causes as a member of the Brooklyn Women’s Suffrage Society, chair of the Alliance of Women’s Clubs of Brooklyn, Vice President of the Memorial Hospital for Women and Children, and a director of the Welcome Home for Girls.


Mary Burnett Talbert Humanities 1866 Ohio 2005

Mary Burnett Talbert

Year Honored: 2005
Birth: 1866 - 1923
Born In: Ohio
Achievements: Humanities

Civil Rights activist and suffragist, Talbert was the first African-American high school principal in the state of Arkansas. Moving to Buffalo in 1891, she went on to lecture internationally on race relations and women’s rights. In 1905, she helped found and organize the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the NAACP.


Anne Sullivan Education 1866 Massachusetts 2003

Anne Sullivan

Year Honored: 2003
Birth: 1866 - 1936
Born In: Massachusetts
Achievements: Education

Best known as the woman who taught Helen Keller to read, write and minimally speak, Anne Sullivan lost her own sight to trachoma at an early age. She went on to graduate from Perkins School for the Blind in Boston and eventually receive medical treatment that restored her sight. Both Sullivan and Keller became role models for thousands of physically challenged people around the world.


Elizabeth Jane Cochran Arts 1864 Pennsylvania 1998

Elizabeth Jane Cochran

Year Honored: 1998
Birth: 1864 - 1922
Born In: Pennsylvania
Achievements: Arts

Trail-blazing journalist considered to be the “best reporter in America” who pioneered investigative journalism.


Marian de Forest Arts, Humanities 1864 New York 2001

Marian de Forest

Year Honored: 2001
Birth: 1864 - 1935
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts, Humanities

Founder of Zonta (1919, Buffalo, NY), a worldwide organization of women business and professional leaders dedicated to improving the legal, political, and economic status of women. Membership now runs 35,000 with 1,214 clubs in 68 countries.


Mary Church Terrell Government 1863 2020

Mary Church Terrell

Year Honored: 2020
Birth: 1863 - 1954
Achievements: Government

One of the most prominent activists of her era with a career that spanned well into the civil rights movements of the1950’s. Terrell believed in racial uplift and equal opportunity, actively campaigning for women’s and Black women’s suffrage.


Annie Jump Cannon Science 1863 Delaware 1994

Annie Jump Cannon

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1863 - 1941
Born In: Delaware
Achievements: Science

Astronomer who perfected the universal system of stellar classification. While working at Harvard Observatory, Cannon compiled the largest accumulation of astronomical information ever assembled by an individual.


Anna Wessels Williams Science 1863 New Jersey 2024

Anna Wessels Williams

Year Honored: 2024
Birth: 1863 - 1954
Born In: New Jersey
Achievements: Science

Dr. Anna Wessels Williams was a pioneer in the field of immunology. She earned her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College in New York before joining the nation’s first municipal diagnostic laboratory at the New York City Department of Health.


Ida B. Wells-Barnett Arts, Humanities 1862 Mississippi 1988

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Year Honored: 1988
Birth: 1862 - 1931
Born In: Mississippi
Achievements: Arts, Humanities

African American leader, anti-lynching crusader, journalist, lecturer and community organizer who fought social injustice all her life. Wells-Barnett sued a railroad over segregated seating, criticized segregated education and became editor and part owner of a newspaper. The horrors of lynching inspired her to lead a major effort to abolish the atrocity.


Edith Wharton Arts 1862 New York 1996

Edith Wharton

Year Honored: 1996
Birth: 1862 - 1937
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts

American novelist and short story writer of the 20th century. The first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (for The Age of Innocence, 1929), Wharton was a prolific writer who averaged more than a book a year after the age of 40 until her death.


Nettie Stevens Science 1861 Vermont 1994

Nettie Stevens

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1861 - 1912
Born In: Vermont
Achievements: Science

Research biologist who identified that the “X” and “Y” chromosomes determined the sex of humans, ending scientific debate as to whether sex was determined by heredity or other factors. Stevens was a biology professor at Bryn Mawr College throughout her career.


Jane Addams Humanities 1860 Illinois 1973

Jane Addams

Year Honored: 1973
Birth: 1860 - 1935
Born In: Illinois
Achievements: Humanities

Social reformer and peace activist who created Hull House in the slums of Chicago, starting an American settlement house movement to provide help for the poor. A lifelong activist, Addams fought child labor, infant mortality and dangerous workplaces. Founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, she won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931.


Annie Oakley Arts 1860 Ohio 1993

Annie Oakley

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1860 - 1926
Born In: Ohio
Achievements: Arts

Markswoman, was probably the nation’s finest. A performer for many years with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Oakley was a staunch supporter of other women’s opportunities and raised funds to send needy women to college and nursing school.

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