Marie Carmichael Stopes

Born in Edinburgh in 1880, Marie Stopes built an impressive early career as a palaeobotanist, studying fossil plants and becoming the first woman on the faculty at the University of Manchester. Alongside her scientific work, she also wrote poetry and popular nonfiction, bringing a confident public voice to subjects that were rarely discussed openly.

She became widely known after publishing books such as Married Love, which helped push ideas about sexual relationships and family planning into mainstream debate. In 1921, with her second husband Humphrey Verdon Roe, she helped found Britain’s first instructional birth control clinic, and she remained a major public campaigner on women’s reproductive lives.

At the same time, any modern account of Stopes has to note the darker side of her legacy. Reliable sources describe her not only as a women’s rights advocate but also as a supporter of eugenics, a position that has shaped how her life and work are judged today. She died in 1958, leaving behind a career that was influential, groundbreaking, and sharply contested.