What one person, living or dead........

[lawgrad91]

Marie Curie or Queen Elizabeth I. (Both?)

Both women were brilliant and had interesting lives outside their fields of expertise.

I hadn't thought of Eleanor Roosevelt, but she is fascinating as well.

Besides being queen, what was QE's field of expertise?

I seem to recall that QEI was quite good at organizing people and moving the Empire's agenda forward. Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the men doing her bidding as they used to say. She was willing to have rivals (see Mary Queen of Scots) eliminated. What would you expect from a daughter of Henry VIII?

She was highly educated (a rarity for people, especially women, of her time). She managed not to be executed during the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey and was queen for 45 years. She was queen during the time of Sir Francis Drake, the English captain who was the first to sail around the world and live to tell. She was queen during at least some of the time of Shakespeare and the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

And, if you know me, you know I appreciate some salacious humor. I expect QE 1 would have interesting stories to tell about a lot of men, her nickname of "The Virgin Queen" notwithstanding.