Chrystal Macmillan

Women graduates of Scottish universities had a quirk on their side: those universities elected MPs, and the electorate was defined as "persons" holding degrees. In 1908 Macmillan, a mathematics graduate of Edinburgh, argued that case herself in the House of Lords, the first woman to plead there. The Lords ruled against her, but the case put the "persons" argument on the record and built her name as a strategist. She went on to help found the Women's International League and later qualified as a barrister, working for equal nationality rights for married women.