Jane Addams 1860 – 1935

Jane Addams was an American social philosopher, reformer, and pacifist and the most influential American woman public intellectual of her generation. In 1889 she co-founded Hull House in Chicago, the most famous of the American settlement houses, and from that base contributed in close dialogue with John Dewey and other pragmatists to the development of American pragmatism, social ethics, and progressive reform. Her Democracy and Social Ethics, Newer Ideals of Peace, and The Long Road of Woman's Memory took the experience of working women, immigrants, and the poor as central material for ethics and democratic theory. She was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.