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

Linda Richards Science 1841 1994

Linda Richards

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1841 - 1930
Achievements: Science

Received the first diploma awarded by the nation’s first school of nursing. Richards dedicated her career to creating professional nurses training schools nationwide to improve both patient care and nurses’ skills.


Kate Stoneman Government 1841 New York 2009

Kate Stoneman

Year Honored: 2009
Birth: 1841 - 1925
Born In: New York
Achievements: Government

Kate Stoneman was the first woman admitted to practice law in New York State. In 1885, she became the first female to pass the New York State Bar Exam, but her 1886 application to join the bar was rejected because of her gender. Stoneman immediately launched a lobbying campaign to amend the Code of Civil Procedure to permit the admission of qualified applicants without regard to sex or race, and was successfully admitted to the bar later the same month. In 1898, she became the first female graduate of Albany Law School, and was the first woman to receive a bachelor’s degree from any department of Union University.


Ellen Swallow Richards Science 1842 1993

Ellen Swallow Richards

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1842 - 1911
Achievements: Science

The nation’s first professional woman chemist, an important figure in opening careers in science to women. By applying scientific principles to domestic life, Richards became a leader in the new disciplines of sanitary engineering, nutrition and home economics.


Mary Putnam Jacobi Science 1842 1993

Mary Putnam Jacobi

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1842 - 1906
Achievements: Science

Physician who founded the Association for the Advancement of Medical Education of Women. Jacobi was a leader in obtaining quality medical education for women.


Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Humanities 1842 1995

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

Year Honored: 1995
Birth: 1842 - 1924
Achievements: Humanities

African American leader from New England. Ruffin was a suffragist, fought slavery, and founded several organizations for African American women, including the Boston branch of the NAACP and the League of Women for Community Service.


Frances Wisebart Jacobs Philanthropy 1843 Kentucky 1994

Frances Wisebart Jacobs

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1843 - 1892
Born In: Kentucky
Achievements: Philanthropy

The driving force behind the concept of today’s United Way, founder of the Frances Jacobs Hospital (National Jewish Hospital for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine), an educator and philanthropist.


Harriet Williams Russell Strong Business 1844 New York 2001

Harriet Williams Russell Strong

Year Honored: 2001
Birth: 1844 - 1926
Born In: New York
Achievements: Business

An inventor of water-conservation techniques, she was also a very successful businesswoman. Her water irrigation systems are credited with being one of the factors in the development of southern California as a major agricultural region.


Sarah Winnemucca Humanities c.1844 Nevada 1994

Sarah Winnemucca

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: c.1844 - 1891
Born In: Nevada
Achievements: Humanities

Paiute leader who dedicated her life to returning land stolen by the government back to the tribes, especially the land of her own Paiute Tribe.


Mary Cassatt Arts 1844 Pennsylvania 1973

Mary Cassatt

Year Honored: 1973
Birth: 1844 - 1926
Born In: Pennsylvania
Achievements: Arts

American impressionist painter who captured the soul of family life, women, children, interiors and gardens. A friend and student of the great Impressionists of Paris, Cassatt powerfully influenced American art.


Kate Mullany Humanities 1845 2000

Kate Mullany

Year Honored: 2000
Birth: 1845 - 1906
Achievements: Humanities

Founder and organizer of the Collar Laundry Union in 1864, she led a strike of 200 laundresses in Troy, NY, which resulted in a 25% wage increase and improvement of working conditions. Her efforts to organize women in New York City and financially assist both male and female unions were rewarded when she was appointed as an assistant secretary of the National Labor Union, making her the first female to hold a national labor post.


Mary Mahoney Science 1845 Massachusetts 1993

Mary Mahoney

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1845 - 1926
Born In: Massachusetts
Achievements: Science

First African American woman to study and work as a professionally trained nurse. Mahoney received her diploma from the New England Hospital in 1879, one of only four of 18 to pass the difficult course.


Anna Howard Shaw Humanities 1847 England 2000

Anna Howard Shaw

Year Honored: 2000
Birth: 1847 - 1919
Born In: England
Achievements: Humanities

A leader in the women’s suffrage movement, Shaw was a master orator for social justice, and the first woman to be ordained by the Protestant Methodist Church. She was the first living American woman to be awarded the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal.


Emma Smith DeVoe Humanities 1848 Illinois 2000

Emma Smith DeVoe

Year Honored: 2000
Birth: 1848 - 1927
Born In: Illinois
Achievements: Humanities

President of the Washington Equal Suffrage Association, successfully ran the campaign that resulted in Washington becoming the first state in the 20th century to grant full enfranchisement to women in 1910, a full decade before passage of the 19th Amendment. DeVoe established the first national organization of voting women, which eventually merged with the National League of Women Voters, leaving an invaluable legacy about the importance of the educated use of the franchise.


Emma Lazarus Arts 1849 New York 2009

Emma Lazarus

Year Honored: 2009
Birth: 1849 - 1887
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These famous words from The New Colossus, were written by Emma Lazarus, one of the first successful Jewish American authors. Originally created in 1883, the sonnet was later engraved in bronze and placed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Throughout her lifetime, Lazarus authored and published numerous poems, essays, letters, short stories and translations. She was an important forerunner of the Zionist movement, having argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before the term Zionist was even coined.


St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Humanities 1850 Italy 1996

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

Year Honored: 1996
Birth: 1850 - 1917
Born In: Italy
Achievements: Humanities

Established orphanages, day care centers, schools, clinics and hospitals for immigrants in the United States and around the world. She established a missionary order of women and was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint.


Susette La Flesche Humanities 1854 Nebraska 1994

Susette La Flesche

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1854 - 1903
Born In: Nebraska
Achievements: Humanities

Member of the Omaha Tribe and a tireless campaigner for native American rights. La Flesche was the first Native American published lecturer, artist and author. She helped change national perceptions about the rights of Native Americans.


Ida Tarbell Arts 1857 Pennsylvania 2000

Ida Tarbell

Year Honored: 2000
Birth: 1857 - 1944
Born In: Pennsylvania
Achievements: Arts

Writer and editor, her expose of the Standard Oil Trust in the 1904 publication The History of the Standard Oil Company prompted the federal government to prosecute and break up Standard Oil for anti-trust violations. She founded the American Magazin, authored several biographies, and, in spite of her 1912 anti-feminist book, The Business of Being a Woman, remains a role model for women and men in journalism.


Martha Matilda Harper Business 1857 Canada 2003

Martha Matilda Harper

Year Honored: 2003
Birth: 1857 - 1950
Born In: Canada
Achievements: Business

After 25 years of low-wage service, Martha Matilda Harper started a beauty products system called the Harper Method, eventually realizing over 500 franchises world-wide in the 1920s. Harper is credited with creating the modern retail franchising method. She was also known as a social justice advocate ahead of her time, offering evening hours for working women, profit-sharing and personal time off. She refused to use permanents or hair dyes in her salons because of the associated chemicals.


St. Katharine Drexel Humanities 1858 Pennsylvania 2011

St. Katharine Drexel

Year Honored: 2011
Birth: 1858 - 1955
Born In: Pennsylvania
Achievements: Humanities

A missionary who dedicated her life and fortune to aid Native Americans and African Americans, Saint Katharine Drexel is only the second recognized American-born saint. In 1891, Saint Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order that today remains devoted to the education and care of Native Americans and African Americans. During her lifetime, Saint Katharine and her order founded more than sixty missions and schools, including Xavier University of Louisiana. Saint Katharine was beatified in 1988 and canonized in 2000.


Hannah Greenebaum Solomon Humanities 1858 Illinois 1995

Hannah Greenebaum Solomon

Year Honored: 1995
Birth: 1858 - 1942
Born In: Illinois
Achievements: Humanities

Club woman and welfare worker on matters relating to child welfare, she organized a nationwide Jewish Women’s Congress as part of the 1890’s World’s Fair. It later became the National Council of Jewish Women, to which she was elected its first president.


Carrie Chapman Catt Humanities 1859 Wisconsin 1982

Carrie Chapman Catt

Year Honored: 1982
Birth: 1859 - 1947
Born In: Wisconsin
Achievements: Humanities

Tenacious women’s suffrage organizer whose efforts at the helm of the National American Women Suffrage Association put forth the “winning plan” that led to state-by-state enactments of suffrage and the final victory in 1920.


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.


Charlotte Perkins Gilman Arts 1860 Connecticut 1994

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1860 - 1935
Born In: Connecticut
Achievements: Arts

Philosopher, writer, educator and activist who demanded equal treatment for women as the best means to advance society’s progress. Her landmark Women and Economics (1898) argued that until women gained economic independence, real autonomy and equity could not be achieved.

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