Margaret Thatcher

British politician who became the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and was one of the most powerful women in the world in the latter part of the 20th century.

The woman who would be later nicknamed "The Iron Lady" was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in a flat above the family grocery store in a town some 100 miles north of London. Her father went on to own two grocery stores and was active in politics. She acquired a love for music from her mother, a dressmaker. She has an older sister, Muriel. A self-confident child, she skipped a grade in elementary school and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ Schools at the age of ten. She almost always led her class academically, and also served as captain of games and vice-captain of the hockey team. During holidays, she helped out at the family grocery store, and spent spare time reading about politics and international affairs. She sat in on court sessions over which her father presided, studied the piano, and took private elocution lessons. During the 1935 general election, she ran errands for the local Conservative party organization, her first real exposure to politics.

She was educated at Somerville College at the University of Oxford, where she studied chemistry and X-ray crystallography, sang in the Bach choir and kept up with politics. In 1946, she was elected president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. She graduated with a B. S. degree in natural science in 1947, and has an M. A. degree from Oxford.

She worked as a research chemist developing plastics from 1947 to 1951. In 1949, she was invited to become the Tory candidate for Parliament from Dartford, Kent during a forthcoming election. She didn’t win, but her name became more known.

In 1951, she began studying law in her spare time, and in 1953, having studied for the bar, she became a tax lawyer specializing in taxation and patent law.