* Ilora Finlay

..... the U.K's FIRST woman professor of Palliative Medicine when appointed on 29th August 1996 by the University of Wales. She was Medical Director at the Marie Curie Centre in Penarth, South Wales, and was awarded the prestigious professorship for her continued accomplishments in the field of palliative medicine, involving care of the terminally ill. She was the FIRST palliative care consultant in Wales

* I'Man Mufti

..... FIRST woman Cabinet Minister in Jordan when made Minister for Social Development but the women in her country had still not got the vote. She was educated at universities in Egypt and England and worked for 16 years with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, was head of Jordan's former Department of Women's Affairs which became part of the Ministry of Social Development

* Imogen Cunningham

 born 1883 died 1976

..... one of the finest of American photographers who was the FIRST woman to photograph male nudes when she made a series of studies of her husband after their marriage in 1915

* Imra Shoalb

..... FIRST female Muslim TUC officer when appointed president by Oldham, Manchester in 2003 when the town re-established its branch of the Trades Union Congress to help tackle local far-right political activity

* Ina Donna Coolbrith

 born 1842 died 1928

..... FIRST Poet Laureate in the state of  California. She was born in Illinois and taken to California as a child in a covered wagon. After 1865 she lived in the San Francisco Bay region and helped to edit Overland Monthly. In 1915 she organised a World Congress of authors for the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco

* Indira Gandhi

 born 1917 died 1984

..... in 1966 she became the FIRST woman Prime Minister of India when the Indian National Congress leader Shastri died. She was the daughter of Nehru and after becoming PM was responsible for many advances in India.  Before becoming PM she had held many posts in the Indian National Congress, was chairwoman of its women's department, was a member of various advisory boards and the central Committee. She served as PM for 11 years until her defeat in 1977 by the Janata party. However she remained one of the most powerful personalities in Indian politics until her death when members of her own Sikh Security guards assassinated her. It was estimated that well over 2000 Sikhs were killed in retribution

* Ingeborg Bachmann

 born 1926 died 1973

..... Austrian who was the FIRST woman Professor of Poetics at the University of Frankfurt (1959). Her work was mainly concerned with the helplessness of women in a world of egotistical, successful men. In 1959 she was awarded the Prize of the War Blind and received the Berlin Critics Prize in 1961

* Ingrid Bjerkas

..... FIRST woman vicar in Norway

* Intissar Al- Wazir

..... Palestinian who was the FIRST woman to reach the top ranks of PLO leadership when appointed to the Central Committee of the PLOs main Fatah group. Her nom de guerre is Um Jihad - Mother of the Holy War. Her husband founded the Fatah group with Yassir Arafat and remained its military commander until assassinated by an Israeli hit squad

* Iolanda Balas

 born 1936

..... FIRST Romanian to win an athletics European and Olympic medal in 1962. She also set 14 world records including the FIRST 6ft leap (1.83m) in the high jump. She dominated the high jump events and for ten years the rest of the world's female high jumpers had to settle for second best

* Irene of Athens

  born 8th century

..... FIRST woman to rule the Byzantine empire alone. She was addressed as Basileus (King) and at first ruled with her son but eventually she had him blinded and ruled alone for 5 years

* Irene Barclay

 neé Martin

 born 1894 died 1989

..... in 1922 she became the FIRST ever woman chartered surveyor and for 51 years until her retirement in 1973 she ran her own business. She was one of the people who shaped the organisation of housing associations in Britain and worked for better living facilities in Somers Town where she had her practice. In 1925 she became secretary of the St Pancras Housing Association and in the 1930s her struggle with landlords and loan sharks led to the association's own loan club and retail furniture shop

* Irene Joliot-Curie

 born 1897 died March 17th 1956

..... with her husband made the FIRST artificial radioisotope for which they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. She was the daughter of Marie Curie and helped her mother in her work as a radiographer and was appointed as her preparateur at the Radium Institute in Paris. Her doctoral thesis was a study of the a-rays from polonium. In 1926 she married Frederic Joliot and worked closely with him. In 1936 she was appointed Under - Secretary of State for Scientific Research and from 1946 to 1951 was one of the four scientific commissioners for the French atomic energy project and was also a director of the Radium Institute from 1947. She died from leukaemia, as did her mother, resulting from prolonged exposure to intense radiation

 * Irene Gibson

..... FIRST professed hermit in Ireland when she lived a life of frugality, solitude and prayer in a remote corner of County Mayo

* Irene Zubaida Khan

..... FIRST woman, FIRST Asian woman and FIRST Muslim to guide the world's largest human rights organisation when she became Secretary General of the UK-based Amnesty International in 2001

* Irene Manton ( 1904-1988) and Sidnie Manton (1902-1979)

 ...... FIRST two sisters to be elected Fellows of the Royal Society

* Irene Nottage

..... Englishwoman who was the FIRST mother to give birth to healthy twins after being treated with a revolutionary stomach patch which helped reduce the number of premature babies born

* Irene Marryat Parlby

born January 9th 1868 died July 12th 1965

..... in 1913 she set up the FIRST women's group of the United Farmers of Alberta and in 1921 became Alberta's FIRST female cabinet minister. In 1927 she was a member of Canada's Famous Five

* Irene Schroeder

born 1909

..... when she died on February 23rd 1931 when she became the FIRST woman to be electrocuted in Pennsylvania and the FIRST woman to be executed in that state since 1890. She was executed for her part in the killing of a police man who was pursuing her and her accomplice, Walter Glenn Dague, after a robbery. Her young son was in the car and he became the state's chief witness after saying to a policeman " my mother killed a cop like you". Irene did not deny the murder

* Irene Templeton and Kathleen Young

..... FIRST women priests in the United Kingdom when ordained at St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast in June 1990 following the Church of Ireland's decision by a two thirds majority to accept women into its ministry

* Irene Tomasiuk

 born February 12th 1953 died 1996

.....  FIRST woman to join the night news sub-editing staff of the Daily Telegraph's Fleet Street office in the mid I980s and was later responsible for its Court and Social page

* Irene Walmsley

.....  in January 1997 she became the FIRST woman to be named chair of the Leigh Magistrates bench (Manchester) in 25 years. She had been a magistrate for the previous 17 years and took over the chair from Alan Graham

* Iris Barry

 born 1895 died 1969

..... one of the most dynamic women in the history of film criticism she became the FIRST black curator of New York's Museum of Modern Art. From 1923 to 1930 she wrote for the Spectator and was film editor of the Daily Mail from 1926 to 1930.  In 1926 she published Let's Go To The Pictures and she also compiled and edited The Film Index, a long volume treating all aspects of film

* Iris Freeman

 neé Iris Margaret Alberge

 born July 7th 1927 died 1997

..... Englishwoman who was one of the FIRST solicitors in the growing field of employment law. She qualified as a solicitor in 1970 and became a partner of her husband's firm, D J Freeman, where she influenced its recruitment policies regarding women solicitors.  After retiring from practise she began a new career as a writer and in 1993 her biography of Lord Denning was published

* Iris Gusner

 born 1941

..... FIRST East German woman feature film director to become widely known. From 1961 to 1967 she studied film in Moscow, then worked for GDR television and then moved to DEFA film studios where she became a director in 1972.  Her first feature to attract attention for its feminine perspective was Alle Meine Maedchen (All My Girls) in 1979

* Iris Margaret Elsie Lemare

 born September 27th 1902 died 1997

..... FIRST professional woman conductor in Britain and the FIRST woman guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1931, with Elizabeth Lutyens and Anne Macnaghten, she founded the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts which were given at the Ballet Club Theatre ( later the Mercury). At one of these she conducted Benjamin Britten's Sinfonietta (Op1), the FIRST important public performance of his music. Her pioneering work awarded her no official recognition but earned her an important place as a musician whose work and enthusiasm contributed to the English music renaissance

* Iris McIntyre

..... one of the FIRST women deacons to be ordained in the Anglican church in 1987. In 1989 she converted to Roman Catholicism and accepted that she would never wear her clerical collar again

* Iris Whyte

..... Britain's FIRST female inventor of the year in 1998  when she designed a talking potty

* Irmgard Flugge Lotz

 born 1903 died 1974

.....  FIRST woman Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. In 1960 she was the only woman delegate to an international conference on automatic flight control and in 1970 was appointed a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics - the second woman ever to he so honoured. She also received the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers. Her work was mainly in the field of flight dynamics and navigation and in WW2 she began to develop her theory of automatic flight control systems which even made possible the development of jet aircraft

.....  FIRST named woman to appear on a U.S coin when in 1893 a commemorative quarter was struck, marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first voyage

* Isabel de Flores y del Oliva - Rose of Lima

 born 1586 died 1617

..... FIRST person in the Americas to be canonised a saint

* Isabel Godin

..... FIRST woman to travel the length of the Amazon River when she went to join her husband. Although she travelled initially with a large party she was eventually the only person left alive and was found and cared for by native Indian people

* Isabel de Soto

..... Spanish woman who became the FIRST woman governor in the world when she was designated by her husband, Hernando de Soto, to act as governor of Cuba whilst he was away on his travels. He was a great Spanish explorer, conqueror of Nicaragua and Peru and the FIRST European to set eyes on the Mississippi River in 1539

* Isabel Peron

 born 1931

..... FIRST woman Head of State of the Americas as President of Argentina  - 1974-76. Born Marcia Estela Martinez Cargas in La Rioja she was a dancer in a nightclub when she met Juan Peron, the exiled ex-President. She became his third wife and helped him to maintain his influence in Argentina. In 1973 they returned there and he named her as his vice-Presidential partner in the elections which they won by a landslide victory. When he died she assumed the Presidency and like Evita championed the cause of the Argentine women. In 1976 she was overthrown and charged with misappropriation of public funds but was later acquitted

* Isabella Andreini

..... published her first play La Mirtilla, the FIRST pastoral play to be published by a woman in Italy - 1588

* Isabella Bishop

 born 15th October 1831 died 7th October 1904

..... FIRST English woman to travel alone throughout the interior of Japan and FIRST woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892. Throughout her journeys to America, Western Tibet, Turkey, Persia, The Rockies and Japan she was in constant pain and had to wear a steel support for her back. She endured more than one unsuccessful operation, suffered from insomnia and at the age of 18 years had a fibrous tumour removed from her spinal area

* Isabella Boussaert

 .....  FIRST woman pilot in the French Air Force - 1985

* Isabella Duncan

..... FIRST woman to appear on the cover of a cricketing magazine when her picture was on the Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1998 in a special edition dedicated to women who play in the game alongside men. She was one of 12 female cricketers interviewed for the edition and its aim was to influence the forthcoming vote by members of the 211-year-old Marylebone Cricket Club on whether women should be allowed to join

* Isabella Ford

 born 1860 died 1924

..... Englishwoman who was the FIRST woman to speak at the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee

* Isabelle Harriet Lucas

 born December 3rd 1927 died 1997

..... Canadian-Barbadian who was the FIRST black Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing. She first achieved fame in The Fosters, a sitcom about the misadventures of a black family in London, which ran for 22 weeks

* Ita Clare Buttrose

  born 1942

.....  FIRST woman in Australia to be editor of either a daily or a Sunday paper - 1981

* Ivy Baker Priest

 born 1905 died 1975

..... FIRST woman to place a candidate for nomination for US president when she placed Ronald Reagan for the Republican Party in 1968

* Ivy Benson

 died May 6th 1993

..... leader of the FIRST all-woman dance band. In 1945 Mecca gave her the chance to front her own line-up at the Ritz Ballroom in Manchester. The band later went to Glasgow, on to Covent Garden and then began overseas trips to entertain troops as the war came to a close. With the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act she had to change the band's name from Ivy Benson and Her Ladies' Band to Ivy Benson and Her Showband. When a man tried to assert his rights to join he was asked what size of dress he wanted

* Ivy Williams

 born September 7th 1877 died February 18th 1966

..... FIRST woman to be called to the English Bar in 1922 and the FIRST woman to be awarded the DCL (Doctor of Civil Law) (Oxford) in 1923 when she published The Sources of Law in the Swiss Civil Code. Born in Newton Abbott, Devon, she was educated privately and studied Latin, Greek, Italian and Russian and could speak French and German fluently. By 1903 she had taken all her law exams but could not matriculate or receive her BA, MA and BCL from Oxford until 1920 due to the legal restrictions on female students. When her brother was killed in the Great War she endowed two scholarships at Oxford in his memory, one for women only. In 1956 she was elected an honorary Fellow of St Anne's College

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