Gertrude Stein

American writer, a novelist and playwright whose works include "Three Lives," 1908 a biography, "Alice B. Toklas," 1933 and an autobiography, "Everybody's Autobiography," 1937. An eccentric, she was one of the most colorful figures in the post-WW I literary scene. In Paris, she formed a salon epicenter of intellectuals, artists and writers. Her weak-spirited mother died when she was 14 and her tyrant dad died 14 years later, leaving her money. She studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University for four years, but flunked out in the turmoil of her first lesbian affair. She went through the exact same scenario on a second occasion, only this time at Radcliffe University. In 1903 she moved to Paris. Four years later she met Alice B. Toklas for the first time, it was love at first sight for both. Alice was slender, whereas Stein was heavyset, plain and butch with rolls of fat. They ended up devoted life partners, with Toklas missing Stein for 21 years after her death.

On July 27, 1946 she died in a hospital in Neuilly sur Seine, France. Suffering from cancer, she slipped into a coma at about 5:30 PM and died an hour later, at 6:30 PM according to her obituary in the New York Times. She was 72.