Emily Davies (1830–1921)

Emily Davies was a leading women's rights activist in Victorian England, best known for her efforts to win women access to higher education. She helped Elizabeth Garrett Anderson to become the first British woman to obtain a medical license. She wrote her most famous work "The Higher Education of Women" in 1866 and organized John Stuart Mill's petition to Parliament for women's suffrage that same year. In 1869, she co-founded Britain's first women's college, Girton College, which moved to Cambridge University in 1873. Davies was mistress of the college until 1875 and then served as its secretary until 1904. (Although it was part of Cambridge University, Girton did not begin granting full degrees to women until 1940.)