Short, honest profiles of people whose courage, curiosity and persistence changed the world around them. Read one when you need a reminder of what’s possible.
One of Iran’s first female judges, demoted to clerk after the revolution, who became a human rights lawyer
She was one of Iran’s first women judges, stripped of the bench in 1979, and rebuilt herself as a lawyer taking cases no one else would. She won the…
Ordered by his company to stop, he built the blue LED anyway, was paid a small bonus, and sued
An engineer at a small chemicals company on the island of Shikoku, he attacked a problem the big laboratories had given up on and made the bright…
Enslaved as a child, he became the guide every famous explorer of East Africa depended on
Captured and sold into slavery as a boy, he was freed in India and returned to Africa, where he led and translated for Burton, Speke, Stanley and the…
Rejected at his first audition for being unable to read, he learned from a waiter and won an Oscar
A tomato farmer’s son from the Bahamas who arrived in New York at 16 with three dollars, he was thrown out of a theatre audition for his accent and…
A childhood abuse survivor who climbed Everest, then took other survivors up its lower slopes with her
A Peruvian-American survivor of childhood sexual abuse, she became the first Peruvian woman to summit Everest and the first openly gay woman to…
A street vendor in Rio who became Brazil's best known media and retail entrepreneur
Born to a poor family of Greek Jewish immigrants, he sold goods on the streets of Rio de Janeiro as a boy before becoming a travelling salesman and…
Came out to his fellow treason trialists and made gay rights part of the fight against apartheid
A township youth activist charged with treason, he told his co-accused in prison that he was gay, held his ground when some wanted him out, and built…
Walked away from an Olympic final to protect her mind, then came back to win three more golds
Taken into foster care as a toddler and adopted by her grandparents, she became the most decorated gymnast in history, and in Tokyo showed the world…
Gave birth in a cowshed, begged on railway platforms and became mother to more than a thousand orphans
An unwanted girl from Maharashtra, married at twelve and thrown out pregnant at twenty, she survived by singing for food at stations and began taking…
At 62, a convent teacher of rich girls moved into the rubbish-pickers' slums of Cairo for 22 years
Madeleine Cinquin spent decades teaching in comfortable convent schools before choosing, near retirement, to live among the zabbaleen of Cairo with…
From hunger in a township to lifting the Rugby World Cup as the Springboks' first Black captain
Raised by his grandmother in a township near Port Elizabeth, sometimes with nothing to eat, he won a school scholarship through rugby and captained…
A blacksmith’s son whose factory was bombed, flattened by an earthquake and sold, and who started again
He failed his first piston-ring contract with Toyota, lost his works to bombs and an earthquake, and in 1946 bolted surplus engines to bicycles in a…
Walked out of slavery with her baby, went to court to get her son back, then spent forty years speaking
Born enslaved in New York, she left with her infant daughter, sued a white man for selling her son illegally and won, then renamed herself and…
Studied by candlelight when her parents took away her fire and clothes, and won over Gauss under a false name
Shut out of the École Polytechnique for being a woman, she submitted work as "Monsieur LeBlanc". Her death certificate described her as a property…
Designed the BBC Micro in a week and the ARM chip inside almost every phone on earth
A Cambridge student who built her first computer during a summer holiday, she designed the BBC Micro prototype in five days and then the ARM…
Kidnapped to Europe and sold into slavery, he came home to find his people wiped out by disease
Captured by an English captain and sold into slavery in Spain, he escaped to England and eventually returned home, only to find his entire village…
A clerk with no degree who filled notebooks with theorems mathematicians are still working through
Thrown out of college twice for neglecting every subject but mathematics, he wrote to Cambridge from a shipping office in Madras. He died at 32,…
Did some of his most important mathematics at a café table, and never finished a formal degree
A largely self-taught mathematician discovered doing advanced work in a Kraków park, who went on to found the field of functional analysis and lead a…
The first woman to referee a men's World Cup match
A referee from the Paris suburbs who worked her way up through men's lower leagues, she took charge of a Ligue 1 match, a European final and a…
Arrived on the Kindertransport at five and built a software company staffed by women at home
A child refugee who signed her business letters "Steve" so men would answer, she founded a software firm in 1962 that employed mothers working from…
Given two years to live at 21, he spent the next 55 explaining the universe
Diagnosed with motor neurone disease as a student, he went on to transform our understanding of black holes and wrote the best-selling science book…
Founded the Black Consciousness movement and died naked and shackled in police custody at 30
A medical student who argued that Black South Africans had first to free their own minds, he was banned, harassed and finally beaten to death by…
Failed five times to circle the world alone by balloon, then did it, then vanished flying anyway
An American businessman who failed five times before becoming the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon, and who later…
Blind from birth and signed at eleven, he took control of his music at 21 and made his masterpieces
Born six weeks early and blinded by the oxygen in his incubator, he had a number one hit at thirteen, took control of his career from Motown at 21,…
