Helen Keller

1880 – 1968

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”

Amazing Grace

Before her second birthday, Helen Keller came down with a case of meningitis that left her blind and deaf. Trapped in a dark, silent world, Helen struggled to learn to speak. With the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen became the first blind-deaf person to communicate with hearing and sighted people. Her remarkable story has been told in the play and film The Miracle Worker, but that’s not where it ends. Keller went on to graduate from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University) in 1904, the first blind-deaf person to do so. She traveled to more than 30 countries, wrote 14 books and met every president from Calvin Coolidge to John F. Kennedy.

Annie Glenn
1920 –
Betty Ford
1918 – 2011
Cecile Richards
1959 –
Clara Hale
1905 – 1992
Helen Keller
1880 – 1968
Julia Child
1920 – 2004
Margaret Mead
1901 – 1979
Margaret Sanger
1879 – 1966
Mathilde Krim
1926 –
Michelle Obama
1964 –
Nancy Brinker
1946 –
Ruth Handler
1916 – 2002
Zora Neale Hurston
1891 – 1960

Emily Dunning Barringer: Clara Barton: Alice Gertrude Bryant and Florence West Duckering: Elizabeth Blackwell: Mary Whiton Calkins: Mary Stuart Fisher: Justina Ford: Alice Hamilton: Grace Murray Hopper: Barbara McClintock: Maria Mitchell: Nettie Stevens: Lucy Hobbs Taylor: Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu: Dr. Tsai-Fan Yu: