50 Underrated Women You Never Learned About In History Class

40. Mary Wollstonecraft. Philosopher, advocate for women’s rights in the 1700s, and the mother of Mary Shelley aka the author of Frankenstein, one of the most iconic characters and books of all time.

41. Ryu Gwansun – A Korean resistance leader during the Japanese occupation, her parents were killed by Japanese soldiers at a protest. She organized protests and carried a smuggled copy of the Declaration of Independence. She refused to give up the names of her collaborators, even though she’d been tortured horribly. She died in a pit at the age of 17. She needs a biographical movie ASAP.

42. Lise Meitner. Unjustly denied the Nobel Prize (which was awarded solely to her colleague Otto Hahn) for discovering nuclear fission.

43. Sophie Scholl. She was a member/co-founder of the White Rose who were a resistance group against the Nazis. She, and her brother were students who risked their lives distributing pamphlets in University of Munich explicitly condemning Nazi policy and the Nazis in general. They were caught. She was told she would be spared the death penalty if she denounced her anti-Nazi beliefs. She did not. Her and her brother along with other members of White Rose were executed in 1943.

There is a great film about Sophie Scholl and White Rose called ‘Sophie Scholl: The Final Days’ which I highly recommend, the full thing is on youtube as well.