Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist and feminist activist with a significant influence on feminist existentialism and feminist theory. In 1929 she was placed second in the agrégation in philosophy, after Jean-Paul Sartre, at 21 the youngest person to pass it. Her The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression, became a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She also wrote the novels She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954), and memoirs beginning with Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (1958); she received the 1954 Prix Goncourt and the 1975 Jerusalem Prize.