Star Charts
Every resident of the Galaxy, one line each, for anyone who prefers a list to a sky. Names link to Wikipedia, where the full biographies live.
Someone missing? Nominate them below.
Planets
Scientists, mathematicians, and explorers.
- Hypatia · Alexandria's finest teacher, and it wasn't close.
- Maria Kirch · Found the comet. The byline went elsewhere. Noted.
- Laura Bassi · Doctorate in physics, 1732. You read that right.
- Caroline Herschel · Got paid for astronomy in 1787. Radical.
- Vera Rubin · Proved the invisible. Also, my namesake.
- Chien-Shiung Wu · Parity had it coming.
- Katherine Johnson · The math checks out.
- Henrietta Swan Leavitt · Handed us the ruler for the universe.
- Hisako Koyama · Drew the sun every day for 40 years.
- Annie Maunder · The sunspot butterfly has her wings.
- Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin · Told her conclusion was impossible. It was hydrogen. She was right.
- Jill Tarter · Spent a career listening for neighbors.
- Annie Jump Cannon · Classified 350,000 stars by hand.
- Sandra Faber · Mapped how galaxies grow up.
- Katie Bouman · The black hole picture. Yes, that one.
- Maria Mitchell · America's first professional woman astronomer. Comet included.
- Mary Somerville · The word "scientist" was coined to describe her.
- Mary Jackson · NASA's first Black woman engineer.
- Dorothy Vaughan · Taught herself FORTRAN, then taught everyone else.
- Sally Ride · First American woman in space, famously done with silly questions.
- Margaret Burbidge · We are made of star stuff. She showed the receipts.
- Wang Zhenyi · Explained eclipses in Qing dynasty China. Died at 29. Imagine the sequel.
- Nichelle Nichols · Hailing frequencies open.
- Kate Mulgrew · Captained the ship. Someone had to be first.
- Sabiha Gökçen · First woman to fly a fighter plane, 1936. The Guinness people checked.
- Lydia Litvyak · Twelve kills over the Eastern Front. The White Lily of Stalingrad, gone at 21.
- The spacefarers · Every woman who has left the planet. So far.
- The astronomers · The full census. Long. Growing.
Comets
Organizers and activists who changed the orbit.
- Wangari Maathai · Planted 51 million trees. She was busy.
- Berta Cáceres · Defended a river with her life.
- Rigoberta Menchú · Survived the genocide and then won the Nobel.
Stars
Writers and thinkers who lit the way.
- Audre Lorde · Black, lesbian, feminist, mother, warrior, poet. All true.
- Octavia Butler · Wrote the future before the future showed up.
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz · Argued for girls' education in 1691. She was right.
- Simone de Beauvoir · One is not born, but rather becomes.
Moons
Caretakers, educators, and community builders.
- Wilma Mankiller · First woman to lead the Cherokee Nation.
- Judy Heumann · Sat in the federal building for 25 days. Won.
- Fannie Lou Hamer · Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Voted anyway.
Nebulae
Collectives and movements. Never just one person.
- Combahee River Collective · Named intersectional feminism before the word existed.
- Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo · Mothers of the disappeared. Still marching.
- Sylvia Rivera Law Project · Trans legal aid by and for those who need it most.
- Women Airforce Service Pilots · 1,074 women, 60 million miles, credit deferred until 1977.
Nominate a resident
I keep this list, and I do not know everyone. Who belongs: women, non-binary, and trans people whose work was uncredited, dismissed, or handed to someone else. Any century, any country. Collectives count. Tell me below, or email vera@feminist.dev if you would rather skip the form.
Every nomination is checked against the record before anyone is added. If you leave an email and they are added, you get a thank-you.
Where the stories live
Every name links to Wikipedia. The one-liners are mine. The biographies are the work of volunteers, and on a site about uncredited work, they get the credit. If you can, support the Wikimedia Foundation.