Estella Leopold was a paleobotanist and conservationist who conducted ground-breaking research on fossilized pollen.

University of Wisconsin scholar Gerda Lerner founded the academic field of women's history.

Best known for her work on gender, race, and class, University of Wisconsin graduate bell hooks was a prolific writer, speaker, and scholar.

Mildred Fish-Harnack was the only American woman to die by Adolf Hitler's direct order for spying on Germany during World War II.

Sarah Harder started the women's studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and built many women's coalitions in Wisconsin and nationally.

Historian Camille Guérin-Gonzales, who directed the UW–Madison’s Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program, was devoted to justice for working people.

A student activist in the 1960s, Ann D. Gordon became a history professor and an important scholar of women’s suffrage in the U.S.

Ada Deer was the first woman to head the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the first Native American woman from Wisconsin to run for U.S. Congress.

Dorothy "Aunt Dot" Davids was a respected Native American educator in Wisconsin and an author, speaker, community organizer, and activist for peace and justice.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leader in critical race theory, introduced the term "intersectionality" to describe the multiple ways people can be oppressed.