Chrystal Macmillan
13 June 1872 – 21 September 1937
Politician, Barrister, Feminist and Pacifist
Chrystal Macmillan was a Scottish Liberal politician, barrister, feminist and pacifist, and the first female science graduate from the University of Edinburgh as well as that institution's first female honours graduate in Mathematics. She was an activist for women's right to vote, and for other women's causes. She was the first woman to plead a case before the House of Lords, and was one of the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
In the first year of World War I, Macmillan spoke for the peace-seeking women of the United Kingdom at the International Congress of Women, a peace congress convened at The Hague. Afterward, she met with world leaders such as President Woodrow Wilson, whose countries were still neutral, to present the proposals formulated at The Hague. Wilson subsequently used these proposals as some of his Fourteen Points, his justification for making war to forge a lasting peace. At war's end, Macmillan served as a delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, and helped encourage the founding of the League of Nations. Macmillan tried but did not succeed in getting the League to establish nationality for women independent of the nationality of their husbands.
In 1937, Macmillan's health was failing. In June, a leg was amputated, and her heart was weak. On 21 September she died of heart disease. In her will, she specified bequests to the Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker, and to the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene.
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