Amanda Crowe (1928–2004) was an Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and educator from Cherokee, North Carolina. Amanda Crowe was born on 16 July 1928 in the Qualla Boundary, North Carolina. By the age of four, she had decided to become an artist. Of her childhood, Amanda said: "Every spare minute was spent in carving or studying anything available concerning art... " At the age of eight, she was already selling her carvings. Both of Crowe's parents died when she was very young. By the time she reached high school, her foster mother arranged for her to stay in Chicago, where she graduated from high school and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned the John Quincy Adams fellowship for foreign study in 1952, and she chose to study sculpture with Jose De Creeft at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She ultimately earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952.Public collections that own her work include the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the United States Department of the Interior, and the National Museum of the American Indian. She has exhibited her work in museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, the Asheville Art Museum, and venues in Germany and the United Kingdom. Among many awards, Crowe won the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 2000. She also illustrated the book Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears, first published in 1956 and reprinted several times since. Crowe died in 2004. Many of the contemporary Eastern Band Cherokee sculptors today studied under her.
Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (November 10, 1887 - November 25, 1973) was one of the world's first female engineers. Zamfirescu was born in Galați, Romania on November 10, 1887. Her father, Atanase Leonida, was a career officer while her mother, Matilda Gill, was the daughter of a French-born engineer. Her brother was the engineers Dimitrie Leonida. Due to prejudices against women in the sciences, Zamfirescu was rejected by the School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest. In 1909 she was accepted at the Royal Academy of Technology Berlin, Charlottenburg. She graduated in 1912, with a degree in engineering. It has been claimed that Zamfirescu was the world's first female engineer, but the Irish engineer Alice Perry graduated six years before Zamfirescu in 1906.Returning to Romania, Zamfirescu worked as an assistant at the Geological Institute of Romania.[3] During World War I, she joined the Red Cross. Around this time, she met and married chemist Constantin Zamfirescu, brother of writer Duiliu Zamfirescu. After the war, Zamfirescu returned to the Geological Institute. She led several geology laboratories and participated in various field studies, including some that identified new resources of coal, shale, natural gas, chromium, bauxite and copper. Zamfirescu also taught physics and chemistry. Zamfirescu retired in 1963, aged 75. She died at the age of 86 on November 25, 1973. Zamfirescu was the first woman member of A.G.I.R. (General Association of Romanian Engineers). A street in Sector 1 of Bucharest bears her name.
