Diana Nyad is an American long-distance swimmer known for her record-setting stunts and swims. In the late 1970’s, Nyad was catapulted to fame after she had stroked a 165 kilometre journey from the Bahamas to Florida. Yet, this wasn’t her most glorious victory. In 2013, at the age of 64, Nyad successfully swam 177 kilometres from Cuba to Florida. Her journey—which she had attempted and failed to accomplish four times in the past—had forced her to face some of the ocean’s toughest obstacles. These included venomous jellyfish alongside the possibility of sharks. However, after a gruelling 53 hours in the water, Nyad reached the shores of Key West, Florida, safe and successful.

Tu Youyou is a Chinese Nobel prize winner known for greatly advancing treatments for malaria. First gathering information from local folk and herb remedies, Tu and her team eventually managed to extract artemisinin—which inhibits malaria—from sweet wormwood plants. Although the research was conducted in the 1970s, it was only in the 2000s that the World Health Organisation recommended artemisinin-based drugs as the frontline for malaria treatment. Tu also eventually developed a second antimalarial compound called dihydroartemisinin, winning her and her team much-deserved acclaim. 

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Many know Mary Shelley as the literary creator of Frankenstein, which many hail as the first science fiction book to have been published. Although sometimes overshadowed by her famous husband (poet Percy Shelley) and liberal parents (radical philosopher William Godwin and women’s rights defender, Mary Wollstonecraft), Shelley is in her own right, worthy of recognition. Frankenstein has shaped much of modern pop culture and Shelley’s other books, which include The Last Man and Valperga, are classics in and of itself. 

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Saur Marlina “Butet” Manurung is known as an Indonesian pioneer for alternative education for indigenous peoples. A recipient of Time magazine’s Hero of the Year Award in 2004, as well as the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2014, Butet Manurung became a staunch defender of indigenous people by teaching them how to read and write. She recalls her time with the Orang Rimba people in the Sumatran jungle, the difficulties she faced in earning their trust, and her eventual success with educating their children. After having been tricked into signing contracts under false terms, the Orang Rimba were cheated out of their land, and therefore distrusted pens, books, and outsiders in general. But after Manurung’s efforts, she came to witness the Orang Rimba’s upcoming generation begin to stand up for themselves and their community through her legacy of literacy.

In 2019, Saray N'kusi Khumalo became the first black African woman to climb Mount Everest. An intrepid climber, Khumalo has also conquered five other mountains including Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Elbrus in Russia, and Mount Aconcagua in Argentina. All of her climbs have been to raise funds for children’s education and to help build libraries in Africa. 

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Zuzana Caputova is Slovakia’s first female president, also the youngest at 45 years old. Having won her seat in June 2019, Caputova has vowed to fight impunity and corruption within the relatively young nation’s government. A staunch environmentalist, Caputova is well-known for having spearheaded a successful campaign that shut down a waste dump near her home; the waste dump had been thought to cause an increase in the number of respiratory diseases and leukaemia patients within the neighbourhood. Caputova’s influence had also helped spark protests in 2018, which ultimately led to the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico, who had then been embroiled in the scandal of murdered journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová.

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Fe del Mundo has often been called a woman of firsts. In her lifetime, she became the first woman paediatrician to be admitted to Harvard Medical School, the first woman to be named a National Scientist of the Philippines, and also founded the first pediatric hospital in the country. A proud Filipina, she returned to the Philippines from her medical studies in the United States during the height of World War II and saved thousands of lives by helping bring medical care to rural families. In her 70-year medical career, del Mundo had made major breakthroughs in the treatment of jaundice and diarrhoea. She has also been credited with studies that have led to the invention of the incubator.