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100 People You Should Know

A curated list of lesser-known but extraordinary thinkers, makers, and visionaries who shaped our world.

ART

Alma Thomas – African American abstractionist whose mosaic-like color fields radiate joy.

Hilma af Klint – Created abstract art before Kandinsky, but remained hidden for decades.

Lois Mailou Jones – Painter and educator who carried African diasporic aesthetics into modernism.

Amrita Sher-Gil – The “Indian Frida Kahlo,” a prodigy whose work merged East and West.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres – Minimalist whose conceptual pieces explore loss, queerness, and memory.

Florine Stettheimer – Whimsical American modernist long overshadowed by her male peers.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby – Nigerian visual artist blending collage, memory, and cultural hybridity.

Berthe Morisot – Impressionist master overlooked next to Monet and Renoir.

Leonora Carrington – Surrealist writer-painter whose mythic imagery shaped feminist surrealism.

Tarsila do Amaral – Brazilian modernist whose work defined an entire national style.

ARCHITECTURE

Zaha Hadid – Revolutionary architect, first woman to win the Pritzker Prize.

Lina Bo Bardi – Italian-Brazilian visionary behind São Paulo’s most iconic museum.

Chloé Nègre – Under-recognized interior architect reshaping French design.

Francis Kéré – Burkinabé architect, first African to win the Pritzker.

Tatiana Bilbao – Mexican architect advancing sustainable, equitable housing.

Fay Jones – American apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright whose chapels feel like sacred forests.

Minette de Silva – Sri Lankan modernist and pioneer of tropical modernism.

Kazuyo Sejima – Co-founder of SANAA, master of ethereal minimalism.

Norma Merrick Sklarek – First Black woman licensed as an architect in the U.S.

Anne Tyng – Geometric genius behind many of Louis Kahn’s signature forms.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Tu Youyou – Chinese scientist who discovered artemisinin, saving millions from malaria.

Chien-Shiung Wu – Experimental physicist who disproved a major law of nature but was denied a Nobel.

Patricia Bath – Ophthalmologist who invented laser cataract surgery.

May Edward Chinn – Physician who pioneered early cancer detection methods.

Alice Ball – Chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy.

Ernest Everett Just – Cellular biologist whose discoveries advanced embryology.

Katalin Karikó – Mother of mRNA technology, foundation of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Maryam Mirzakhani – First woman to win the Fields Medal (in math, but for medical students she’s a must-know).

Rosalind Franklin – Crucial contributor to DNA discovery.

Ruth Benedict – Anthropologist whose work shaped cross-cultural medicine and public health.

SPORTS

Alice Coachman – First Black woman to win Olympic gold.

Tegla Loroupe – Kenyan marathoner and peace ambassador.

Wilma Rudolph – Overcame childhood paralysis to win three Olympic gold medals.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee – One of the greatest athletes in heptathlon history.

Kyla Ross – “The Machine,” under-recognized artistic gymnast with extraordinary consistency.

Lusia Harris – First and only woman officially drafted into the NBA.

Althea Gibson – Broke racial barriers in tennis long before Serena.

Eder Jofre – Brazilian boxer considered one of the all-time greats.

Toruń’s Irena Szewińska – The most decorated female Olympian in track history.

Fanny Blankers-Koen – Dutch athlete who won four Olympic golds as a mother of two.

LITERATURE

Buchi Emecheta – Nigerian novelist exploring womanhood, migration, resilience.

Clarice Lispector – Brazilian mystic-writer whose prose is almost spiritual.

Sigrid Undset – Nobel-winning Norwegian writer erased from mainstream reading lists.

Naguib Mahfouz – Egyptian novelist, first Arab author to win the Nobel Prize.

Jean Toomer – Harlem Renaissance writer behind Cane.

Yasunari Kawabata – Japanese stylist whose writing feels like silk.

Maria Dąbrowska – Polish novelist chronicling ordinary lives with extraordinary tenderness.

Gwendolyn Brooks – Poet of Black Chicago, Pulitzer winner.

Assia Djebar – Algerian writer documenting women’s lives during colonization.

Patrick Chamoiseau – Martinican writer behind the créolité movement.

POLITICS & SOCIAL CHANGE

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – Africa’s first female elected head of state.

Wangari Maathai – Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Shirley Chisholm – First Black woman elected to U.S. Congress.

Amina Wadud – Reformer and Islamic feminist scholar.

Thomas Sankara – Burkinabé revolutionary with a visionary social agenda.

Rigoberta Menchú – Indigenous Guatemalan activist and Nobel Prize winner.

Asma Jahangir – Pakistani human rights lawyer and UN rapporteur.

Nawal El Saadawi – Egyptian feminist and physician who challenged political orthodoxy.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir – Iceland’s first female prime minister.

Bayard Rustin – Architect of the March on Washington, often erased from the narrative.

LAW & JUSTICE

Constance Baker Motley – First Black woman federal judge; key strategist in Brown v. Board.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Need we say more?

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee – Chinese American suffragist excluded from citizenship laws.

Amal Clooney – International lawyer doing groundbreaking human rights work.

Dionne Searcey – Legal journalist exposing injustice in West Africa.

Louise Arbour – Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Sandra Day O’Connor – First woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kimberlé Crenshaw – Legal theorist who coined intersectionality.

Navanethem Pillay – South African jurist and former UN rights chief.

Felicitas Gómez Martínez de Méndez – Central plaintiff in Méndez v. Westminster (pre-Brown desegregation case).

MATHEMATICS

Katherine Johnson – NASA mathematician who helped send America to the moon.

Evelyn Boyd Granville – Second Black woman to earn a math PhD in the U.S.

Sofia Kovalevskaya – First major female mathematician in Europe.

Karen Uhlenbeck – Pioneering geometric analyst and Abel Prize winner.

Emmy Noether – The most important mathematician you’ve never been taught.

David Blackwell – Visionary in statistics and game theory.

Marjorie Rice – Homemaker-turned-mathematician who discovered new pentagonal tilings.

Mary Cartwright – One of the earliest contributors to chaos theory.

Shiing-Shen Chern – Giant in differential geometry.

Jill P. Mesirov – Mathematician in genomics and computational biology.

MUSIC

Florence Price – First Black woman to have a symphony played by a major orchestra.

Clara Schumann – Virtuoso pianist overshadowed by her husband.

William Grant Still – Composer known as the “Dean of African-American Music.”

Sister Rosetta Tharpe – The godmother of rock and roll.

Lili Boulanger – French prodigy composer who died young but changed music forever.

Fela Sowande – Father of Nigerian art music.

Teresa Carreño – Venezuelan piano virtuoso and composer.

Toru Takemitsu – Japanese composer who fused Western and Eastern soundscapes.

Barbara Strozzi – Baroque composer who published more than most of her male peers.

Julius Eastman – Radical minimalist composer rediscovered decades later.

FASHION

Ann Lowe – Black American designer who made Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress.

Elsa Schiaparelli – Surrealist couturier overshadowed by Coco Chanel.

Patrick Kelly – Mississippi-born trailblazer in Paris fashion.

Madame Grès – Master draper who revolutionized couture.

Warris Ahluwalia – Sikh designer bridging art, jewelry, and cinema.

Dapper Dan – Harlem icon who reshaped luxury streetwear.

Issey Miyake – Japanese designer behind modern pleating techniques.

Tina Leser – Pioneered global “world fashion” decades before others.

Oumou Sy – Senegalese designer merging couture with tradition.

Claire McCardell – Invented American sportswear as we know it.