Kate Warne (1833 – January 28, 1868)

Kate Warne was the first female detective in the United States.

Described by Allan Pinkerton as a slender, brown haired woman, there is not much else known about Warne prior to when she walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1856. Born in New York, Warne became a widow shortly after she married. Warne was left as a young childless widow in search of work. In answer to an ad in a local newspaper, Warne walked into Pinkerton's Chicago office in search of a job. There is still debate whether or not she walked in with intentions to become a detective or just a secretary. Women were not detectives until well after the Civil War. Pinkerton himself claimed that Warne came into his agency and demanded to become a detective. According to Pinkerton's records, he

"was surprised to learn Kate was not looking for clerical work, but was actually answering an advertisement for detectives he had placed in a Chicago newspaper. At the time, such a concept was almost unheard of. Pinkerton said " It is not the custom to employ women detectives!" Kate argued her point of view eloquently - pointing out that women could be "most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective." A Woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence. Men become braggarts when they are around women who encourage them to boast. Kate also noted, Women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers."

Warne's arguments swayed Pinkerton, who at 10 o'clock on the morning of August 23, 1856, employed Warne as the first female detective. Pinkerton soon had a chance to put Warne to the test. In 1858, Warne was involved in the case of Adams Express Company embezzlements where she was successfully able to bring herself into the confidence of the wife of the prime suspect, Mr. Maroney. She thereby acquired the valuable evidence leading to the husband's conviction. Mr. Maroney was an expressman living in Montgomery, Alabama. The Maroneys stole $50,000 from the Adams Express Company. With Warne’s help, $39,515 was returned. Mr. Maroney was convicted and sentenced to ten years in Montgomery, Alabama.

This was just the beginning of Warne's career, she later went on to solve many more cases until she died shortly after the Civil War. She suddenly caught pneumonia on New Year's Day, 1868, and died on January 28 with Pinkerton at her bedside. She is buried in the Pinkerton Family Plot in Chicago Illinois' Graceland Cemetery. The grave is marked in the Graceland Cemetery under the name of "Kate Warn"; it states that she died of congestion of the lungs at the age of 38. She was buried January 30, 1868.

Alessandra Giliani (1307-1326)

Alessandra Giliani was the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practicing anatomy (which today would be called pathology)

Giliani is believed to have been born in 1307, in San Giovanni in Persiceto, in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna. The chronicle of her life holds that she died in 1326, possibly from a septic wound, at the age of 19. Celebrated as the first female anatomist of the Western World, she is reputed to have been a brilliant prosector (preparer of corpses for anatomical dissection). She worked as the surgical assistant to Mondino de' Liuzzi (d. 1326), a world-renowned professor at the medical school of the University of Bologna. (Credited with being the father of modern anatomy, de' Liuzzi published a seminal text on the subject in 1316.)

Giliani is said to have carried out her own anatomical investigations, developing a method of draining the blood from a corpse and replacing it with a hardening coloured dye—and possibly adding to our understanding of the coronary-pulmonary circulatory system. (All evidence of her work was either lost or destroyed.)

Alessandra Giliani's short life was honoured by Otto Angenius, also one of Mondino's assistants and probably her fiance, with a plaque at the Church of San Pietro e Marcellino[disambiguation needed] in Rome which describes her work.


She is mentioned by the nineteenth-century historian Michele Medici, who published a history of the Bolognese school of anatomy in 1857.

Barbara Quick's novel, A Golden Web, published by HarperTeen in 2010, is a fictional re-imagining of Alessandra Giliani's life and times.

Mary Anning (May 21, 1799 – March 9, 1847)

Mary Anning was a British fossil collector, dealer, and paleontologist who became known around the world for important finds she made in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis in Dorset, a county in Southwest England on the coast of the English Channel, where she lived. Her work contributed to fundamental changes that occurred during her lifetime in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

Mary Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. It was dangerous work, and she nearly lost her life in 1833 during a landslide that killed her dog, Tray. Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified, which she and her brother Joseph found when she was just twelve years old; the first two plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit.

Due to Anning's gender and social class, she was prevented from fully participating in the scientific community of 19th-century Britain, dominated as it was by wealthy Anglican gentlemen. She struggled financially for much of her life. Her family was poor, and as religious dissenters, were subject to legal discrimination. Her father, a cabinetmaker, died when she was eleven.

She became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as about collecting fossils. Nonetheless, as a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. Indeed, she wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone." The only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims.

After her death in 1847, her unusual life story attracted increasing interest. Charles Dickens wrote of her in 1865 that "[t]he carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it." In 2010, one hundred and sixty-three years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.

Jacobina Félicie

(There is no known picture of her.)

Jacqueline Felice de Almania, (in Italian: Jacobina Félicie), (fl. 1322) was an Italian physician active in Paris, France.

Jacobina Félicie was reportedly from Florence in Italy, and was active as a physician in Paris in 1322. She belonged to the minority of licensed female physicians of her time period; in 1292, there were eight female physicians registered in Paris. In 1322, however, Jacobina Félicie was put on trial for unlawful practice. During the trial many testimonies were given where she was said to have cured patients where other physicians had failed and given up hope of the patient's recovery, and according to one witness, she was reputed to be a better physician and surgeon than any of the French physicians in Paris. Despite the testimonies that she was able to cure people the male physicians had given up on, the court reasoned that it was obvious that a man could understand the subject of medicine better than a woman because of his gender. She was banned from practicing medicine and threatened with excommunication if she ever did so again. This decision is considered to have banned women from academic study in medicine in France and obtaining licenses until the 19th-century.

Agnodice (c. 4th century BCE)

Agnodice was born into a wealthy family in Athens, Greece. Her desire to become a physician initiated from witnessing increased numbers of women dying or undergoing painful childbirths. Though women were allowed to learn gynecology, obstetrics, healing, and midwifery in the time of Hippocrates, after his death the leaders of Athens discovered that women were performing abortions, and made becoming a female doctor a capital crime. Agnodice, determined to become a physician and help the women of Athens, cut her hair and donned the clothes of a man to pursue medical training. Agnodice then used an alleged friend’s sickness to account for her future leave to pursue medical training. She then left Athens to study medicine in nearby Egypt, where women played an important role in the medical community.

Agnodice received her medical education in Alexandria, Egypt at the University of Alexandria, and studied under Herophilos, the great anatomist of his day. Soon after acquiring the requisite qualifications, she continued to dress as a man in order to treat the women of Athens. One day, Agnodice heard a woman crying out as she was undergoing labor. Agnodice then went to care for the women in labor, but the woman refused male aid. After revealing herself as a woman, the woman allowed Agnodice to treat her successfully. During the time, women dreaded calling in professional assistance. Agnodice symbolized the trust and comfort between women aiding women. Before long, many women heard about Agnodice being disguised as a male and sought for her care. Agnodice popularity grew the women from the city of Athens began to seek her aid rather than male physicians.

When male physicians began to see that their services were no longer desired by women, the male physicians began to accuse Agnodice for seducing the women and the women were accused of feigning illnesses. Agnodice was then tried before a group of jealous husbands and rivaled doctors for seducing the women of Athens. When Agnodice was brought before the court assembled on a hill near Athens called Areopagus, the men began to condemn her. She then lifted her tunic to revealed her true identity and was condemned further by the men of Athens for her deceit and false pretenses. With a crime warranted of execution if carried out, Agnodice then convinced the judges that it was impossible she could be guilty of the alleged crimes the men claimed upon her. Her adversaries then sought to condemn her for violating the law in which women were not allowed to study any branch of medicine. Before the judges ruled on the trial, a crowd of women arrived at her trial to praise her successes as a physician and chastised their husbands for trying to execute Agnodice. After a short debate, Agnodice was acquitted from her charges and the Athenian law was changed to allow women to be treated by female physicians in Athens.


Before Agnodice, women were taking care of the sick, as well as trying to figure out how the body worked and causes of diseases. Women were also midwives, helping deliver babies, but were not allowed to practice medicine. For the Greeks, Agnodice trial brought changes with the Athenians law which thereby allowed women to study medicine. Agnodice story has also been used through the seventeenth century as a tale for midwives to defend themselves against male-dominated professions seeking to incorporate the study of medicine into childbirth.

Sybil Ludington (April 5, 1761 – February 26, 1839)

In celebration of Independence Day, we remember a little known hero of the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington. At approximately 9 pm on April 26th, 1777, Sybil, the eldest daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington, climbed onto her horse and proceeded to ride 40 miles in order to muster local militia troops in response to a British attack on the town of Danbury, Connecticut -- covering twice the distance that Paul Revere rode during his famous midnight ride.

Riding all night through rain, Sybil returned home at dawn having given nearly the whole regiment of 400 Colonial troops the order to assemble. While the regiment could not save Danbury from being burned, they joined forces with the Continental Army following the subsequent Battle of Ridgefield and were able to stop the British advance and force their return to their boats.

Following the battle, General George Washington personally thanked Sybil for her service and bravery. Although every American school child knows the story of Paul Revere, unfortunately few are taught about Sybil Ludington's courageous feat and her contribution to war effort.

Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852)

Lovelace's interest in mathematics dominated her life for that reason mother taught Lovelace mathematics at an early age. Lovelace was privately home schooled in mathematics and science. Lovelace was arguably the world’s first computer programmer; the programming language “Ada” was named in her honor.

In 1834 she became interested in the plans for Charles Babbage’s proposed calculating machines. Her 1843 article on Babbage’s “analytical engine” included detailed instructions on how such a machine might be programmed, as well as how to calculate Bernoulli numbers.

Over one hundred years after her death Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished after being forgotten as is now recognized as an early model for a computer and as a description of a computer and software.