Helen Keller

An illness at nineteen months left Keller deaf and blind. At six she was taught the word for water at a pump by Anne Sullivan, who stayed with her for forty-nine years; at twenty-four she took a degree from Radcliffe, the first deafblind person to earn one.

She wrote a dozen books, campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights and birth control, and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. Her ashes rest beside Sullivan's; the plaque in braille beneath them has been worn smooth by visitors' fingers.