20 Historical Women Who Only Became Famous After They Died
Recognition That Arrived Too Late
Picture your life's work, all the things you've accomplished, all the effort you've put into projects that haven't quite hit the finish line. Now imagine that you were to perish tomorrow, and everything you've done suddenly receives global recognition, people mourning your death and wishing they'd known you when you were still alive. You'd probably think it's a waste to be famous after you've died, right? And yet, plenty of people in history, particularly women, only became household names after they were no longer around to see it. From groundbreaking work that went unnoticed to achievements that were credited to someone else, let's take a look at 20 women who deserved more fame while they were still alive.
According to Moderna Museet the photographer is unknown on Wikimedia
1. Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier spent much of her adult life working as a nanny, which probably explains why her photography never got recognized. It didn't help, either, that she rarely showed anyone. But in 2007, after material from one of her storage lockers was auctioned off, thousands of her negatives began surfacing. She would die two years later. Now, she's considered one of the most compelling street photographers of the 20th century.
Susanne Nilsson from Trelleborg, Sweden on Wikimedia
2. Hilma af Klint
Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was producing radically abstract paintings years before abstraction became associated with far more famous male artists. Like Maier, however, she kept most of her work from the public eye. Her paintings remained largely unseen until the late 20th century, and she's now a major figure in the history of modern art.
According to Moderna Museet the photographer is unknown on Wikimedia
3. Marie Bashkirtseff
Marie Bashkirtseff died from tuberculosis in 1884 at just 25 without achieving the fame she'd desperately hoped for. Three years later, an edited version of her childhood diary was published in France, becoming a sensation across Europe. Bashkirtseff finally turned into a celebrated literary personality, but it came at a cost.
Unknown author photographer of the studio Benque & cie, in Paris. on Wikimedia
4. Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks had no idea that cells collected during her medical treatment in 1951 would become extraordinarily important to scientific research—or that they'd be named after her. After her death that same year, the cells known as HeLa would become widely recognized in the medical field.
Oregon State University on Wikimedia
5. Alice Ball
At only 23, chemist Alice Ball developed a method of treating Hansen's disease with chaulmoogra oil. She died in 1916 before the research was published, and another chemist took credit for it. Thankfully, Ball's name would later be restored and linked to the achievement, regaining the title she rightfully deserves.
6. Anne Lister
Anne Lister was a wealthy English landowner who had extraordinarily detailed diaries which recorded much of her private life. Just one thing: they were mostly written in a complicated code. It wasn't until after her death in 1840 that scholars deciphered them, and Lister would become one of the most remarkable diarists of the 19th century.
7. Ada Lovelace
Despite all the work Ada Lovelace put into describing an early computer program, her effort attracted little attention during her own lifetime, and she died in 1852 at the age of 36. It was only after modern computing boomed a century later that Lovelace became a notable figure in computing history.
Alfred Edward Chalon on Wikimedia
8. Eunice Newton Foote
Though the findings of Eunice Newton Foote's experiments in the 1850s were presented publicly, she disappeared from the scientific story—even though later researchers became much better known. More than a century after her death, historians rediscovered her work and gave her early experiments more recognition.
Unknown photographer on Wikimedia
9. Alice Kober
For years, classicist Alice Kober painstakingly analyzed Linear B, the undeciphered script from the Aegean world. While she identified crucial patterns, she died in 1950 before the script was finally deciphered two years later. Like the other women on this list, she never got to experience the moment her methods and achievements finally came to light.
10. Noor Inayat Khan
A wireless operator for Britain's Special Operations Executive during World War II, Noor Inayat Khan's secrecy surrounding her work meant no one knew much about what she had accomplished before she died in 1944. Her posthumous George Cross and later biographies, however, eventually made her one of Britain's best-known female agents of the war.
11. Georgiana Houghton
Though Georgiana Houghton did showcase her abstract paintings while she was still alive during the 1860s and 1870s, they baffled many viewers at the time, and her reputation largely disappeared after her death in 1884. It would take more than a century later for historians to realize just how far ahead of her time she was.
Georgiana Houghton on Wikimedia
12. Emma Kunz
While Emma Kunz was a healer and researcher by day, she also produced hundreds of intricate geometric drawings in the 1930s. She died in 1963 without becoming widely known for them. Exhibitions held after her death were the first proper introduction of her work to the art world, which eventually earned Kunz an international following.
13. Mary Anning
The fossil discoveries Mary Anning made along England's Jurassic Coast during the early 19th century were highly remarkable and even included important marine reptile specimens. Her gender and social position, however, prevented her from receiving proper credit. It would be long after her death in 1847 that Anning would become a celebrated pioneer of paleontology.
Credited to 'Mr. Grey' in Crispin Tickell's book 'Mary Anning of Lyme Regis' (1996) on Wikimedia
14. Sacagawea
Sacagawea played an important role during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, though she returned to relative obscurity afterward until her death sometime in 1812. When she was finally a nationally recognized historical figure, she would even have a U.S. dollar coin dedicated to her.
Edgar Samuel Paxson on Wikimedia
15. Dido Elizabeth Belle
A daughter of a young black woman and a Royal Navy officer, Dido Elizabeth Belle wasn't a public celebrity during her lifetime, despite spending much of her life at Kenwood House in England. Museum exhibitions and the 2013 film Belle eventually introduced her story to an international audience more than two centuries after her death.
16. Jeanne Baret
In the 1760s, French botanist Jeanne Baret joined Louis Antoine de Bougainville's voyage around the world while disguised as a man—at the time, French naval regulations barred women from ships. She became the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe, but her achievement was only brought back up much later as historians reconstructed her travels.
Cristoforo Dall'Acqua on Wikimedia
17. Enheduanna
Enheduanna lived more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, serving as a high priestess during the Akkadian Empire. Hymns bearing her name make her one of the earliest known authors in world history, but knowledge of her vanished as the preservation of those writings disappeared. Later archaeological discoveries, thankfully, returned her name to the historical record.
18. Sophie Scholl
Sophie Scholl was involved with the White Rose, a small resistance group criticizing the Nazi regime in Germany. She was arrested and executed in 1943 at only 21, still largely unknown. It would be decades after World War II that she would become one of Germany's most widely recognized symbols of resistance to dictatorship.
Unknown german police officer on Wikimedia
19. Edith Cavell
British nurse Edith Cavell helped Allied soldiers escape into the neutral Netherlands during World War I before German authorities arrested and executed her in October 1915. Once news of her death spread rapidly around the world, she became far more prominent than she had ever been in life.
The original uploader was Vivedatica at Dutch Wikipedia. on Wikimedia
20. Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was an accomplished scientist during her lifetime, but she wasn't remotely the public figure she later became. Most notably, she made major contributions to understanding the structure of DNA, yet she died in 1958, several years before the 1962 Nobel Prize went to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins. Still, her public reputation grew enormously after her death.
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