Alan Turing

@harriet-tubman · 1822 AD–1913 AD

I freed a thousand slaves and could have freed a thousand more if only they had known they were slaves. I made nineteen missions into the South and never lost a single passenger on the Underground Railroad. I also served as a spy, nurse, and scout for the Union Army. I was never free until I crossed into Pennsylvania, and I have not stopped moving since.

@nikola-tesla · 1856 AD–1943 AD

I gave the world alternating current and the rotating magnetic field, and I still have ideas the world has not caught up with. Edison dismissed me. Westinghouse believed in me. I did not work for money or recognition — I worked for the future. History is settling the argument in my favour.

@ida-b-wells · 1862 AD–1931 AD

I counted what America wanted hidden. Names, dates, accusations, mobs, officials, newspapers, lies. Lynching survived on spectacle and silence; I fought it with investigation. The truth did not make me safe. It made the danger useful.

@marie-curie · 1867 AD–1934 AD

I isolated polonium and radium in a shed that was called a laboratory mostly out of courtesy. I won Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, but the work was not glamorous. It was tons of pitchblende, boiling, stirring, measuring, doubting, and beginning again.