Famous Female Teachers a to z

Grace Abbott is best known for her social activism on behalf of immigrants and children. She headed the Children's Bureau from 1921 to 1934.

Social activist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for being a lifetime advocate of the persecuted and oppressed.

Clara Barton was an educator, nurse and founder of the American Red Cross.

Patricia Bath is the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology. She invented the Laserphaco Probe for cataract treatment in 1986.

Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist, serving as president of the National Association of Colored Women and founding the National Council of Negro Women.

Jill Biden is best known for being the wife of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and for her role as America's second lady.

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She became a leading public health activist during her lifetime.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a teacher and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, a trailblazing Southern prep school for African-American students.

In 1949, mathematician Marjorie Lee Browne became one of the first two African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in her field.

Laura Bush is the wife of 43rd U.S. President George W. Bush. She served as first lady from 2001 to 2009.

Judy Chicago is an American artist, educator and writer, and a leading figure in feminist art. She received critical acclaim in the 1970s for her art project "The Dinner Party."

Septima Poinsette Clark was a pioneering educator and activist who championed teacher’s rights with organizations like the NAACP.

Lucille Clifton is a poet whose works generally examine family life, racism and gender issues.

Teacher Marva Collins was one of the most influential education activists of the 20th century, working to gain equal access for minorities to quality education.

As head principal of the Institute for Colored Youth, Fanny Coppin innovated a practice-teaching system and an elaborate industrial-training department.

Lucy Craft Laney was a school teacher and educator who opened a school for African-American students in the South in the late 1800s.

Dorothea Dix was an educator and social reformer whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally ill led to widespread international reforms.

Abigail Fillmore was an American first lady from 1850 to 1853. She was the wife of Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is best known for authoring biographies of American presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Temple Grandin is a noted animal expert and advocate for autistic populations who has penned the books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human.

Alice Hamilton was a physician and authority on lead poisoning and industrial disease. The NIOSH present an award in her name.

In 1982, Jean Harris shot and killed author and cardiologist Herman Tarnower, who wrote the international best-seller The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet.

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author of memoirs and fiction. Her best known work is The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among the Ghosts.

Lois Mailou Jones was a painter whose works reflect a command of widely varied styles, from traditional landscape to African-themed abstraction.

First female politician,attorney to serve as solicitor general of the United States of America.

American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.

Rita Levi-Montalcini shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for her part in the discovery of a protein that stimulates nerve cell growth.

Mary Lyon was an educator and founder of the first women's college, which is now known as Mount Holyoke College.

High school teacher Christa McAuliffe was the first American civilian selected to go into space. She died in the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion in 1986.

Cindy McCain is an Arizona businesswoman, a philanthropist who works with international nonprofit organizations, and the wife of U.S. Senator John McCain.

Abby Lee Miller, who runs a Pittsburgh dance studio, is known for her tirades and tough training as star of Lifetime TV's reality show Dance Moms.

Italian physician Maria Montessori was a pioneer of theories in early childhood education, which are still implemented in Montessori schools all over the globe.

Barbara Morgan was the first teacher-astronaut to complete a shuttle mission on board the Endeavor in 2007.

In 1897, Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to a newspaper about the existence of Santa Claus and got the famous response, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

In 1983, astronaut and astrophysicist Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Ride died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Faith Ringgold is an American artist and author who became famous for innovative, quilted narrations like Tar Beach that communicate her political beliefs.

Augusta Savage is remembered as an artist, activist, and arts educator, serving as an inspiration to the many that she taught, helped, and encouraged.

Controversial radio host Laura Schlessinger, also known as "Dr. Laura," is an expert at giving listeners—and readers—a piece of her mind when it comes to moral living and leading a successful family life.

Alice Sebold is an American writer and best-selling author of the book, The Lovely Bones, which has been hailed the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.

Betty Shabazz is best known as the wife of African-American nationalist leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated in New York City in 1965.

Charlotta Spears Bass was a journalist and activist who, as editor of the California Eagle, championed African-American equality and freedom.

Anne Sullivan was a teacher who, at age 21, taught Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind, how to communicate and read Braille.

Mary Church Terrell was a charter member of the NAACP and an early advocate for civil rights and the suffrage movement.

Mona Jane Van Duyn was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and academic.

Elizabeth Warren is a Democrat from Massachusetts who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. She previously worked as an assistant to President Barack Obama and helped design the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among several other roles.

Simone Weil was a French intellectual, activist and Christian Mystic.

Pioneer author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the autobiographical “Little House” kids’ book series, the basis of the popular television show Little House on the Prairie.

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer who advocated for women's equality. Her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman pressed for educational reforms.