Marie Stopes

British scientist and sex reformer who was an author and crusader for better birth control in the U.K. With degrees in geology and botany and a doctorate in German that she obtained in Munich, she became the first woman on the science staff at Manchester University. Stopes' name became synonymous with birth control as she became more and more impassioned with her cause. During her lifetime, she wrote a film, 10 books, three stage plays and was a second rate poet. One of her noted books is, "Married Love."

During her first marriage, Stopes remained a certified virgin; later, the marriage was annulled. She made a second marriage at 37 and bore a stillborn baby the following year. Her second child was a son whom she cut out of her will years later when he married a woman of his own choice. She and her second husband drifted apart and eventually divorced.

For a woman who rejected sex up to the age of 37, she apparently learned to appreciate the physical expression of love, as she had a 35-year-younger beau at 73.

Stopes died of breast cancer on 2 October 1958, near Dorking, Surrey, England.