Marie Marvingt

French athlete, mountaineer, and aviator. She won numerous prizes (the list is far too long to mention here, please see Wikilink) for her sporting achievements and was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps.

She was a record-breaking balloonist, a pioneering aviator and during World War I became the first woman to fly combat missions as a bomber pilot. She was also a qualified surgical nurse and was the first trained and certified Flight Nurse in the world. Marvingt worked for the establishment of air ambulance services throughout the world.

On 20 February 1955, her eightieth birthday, Marvingt was flown over Nancy by a U.S. Air Force officer from Toul-Rosières Air Base in an American fighter jet. In the same year she also studied piloting helicopters, though she never earned her helicopter pilot's license. In 1961, at the age of 86, she cycled from Nancy to Paris.

Marvingt was the most decorated woman in the history of France with more than 34 official medals and decorations.

Besides all of this Marvingt wrote fiction and prize-winning poetry under the pseudonym Myriel and could speak five languages. In 1922 she bet 10,000 dollars that nobody could better her list of prizes in sport, art, science and travel. She reissued her bet through the newspapers in 1936 and on television in 1948 but there were still no challengers at the time of her death.

In France there are streets, gymnasiums, schools, flying clubs, scout groups, and an apartment complex named after her. France issued an air mail stamp in her honor on 29 June 2004. Several annual awards are given in her memory including those of the Soroptimist Club of Aurillac, France, and one sponsored by the French Aviation and Space Medicine Association (SOFRAMAS) through the United States Aerospace Medical Association.