Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Refused entry to the university because she was a woman, Juana entered a convent so that she could keep reading. She assembled one of the largest libraries in the Americas and wrote poetry, plays and a fierce defence of women's right to learn.

Under pressure from the church she gave up her books and instruments in 1694 and died a year later nursing her sisters through an epidemic. Bones believed to be hers were found in the convent in 1978.