Simone de Beauvoir

Born Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir in January 1908, she became a French existentialist philosopher, writer, and social theorist who shaped feminist thought without claiming the philosopher's title. The Second Sex arrived in 1949 as a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract. She wrote novels—She Came to Stay in 1943, The Mandarins in 1954, the latter winning her the Prix Goncourt—and her memoirs, especially the first volume Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée in 1958, became her most enduring literary contribution. She received the Jerusalem Prize in 1…