10 Forgotten Historical Figures You Didn't Know Changed Your Life

You could claim that Pincus' innovation only really changed the lives for half of the population, this is a pretty shortsighted view on just what Pincus did. What did he do? He created the pill. Which pill? THE pill, the contraceptive one.

Pincus began work on the first oral contraceptive after a request from feminist campaigner Margaret Sanger in 1950. After initial successful trials using synthesised progesterone in rabbits and rats, he expanded the experiment to include human women.

He teamed up with gynaecologist John Rock, partly to share scientific knowledge and innovation but also because Pincus hoped Rock's Catholicism would diffuse religious criticism of the Pill. It didn't help, although the Pill isn't seen nearly as controversially as it was when it was licensed by the FDA in 1960.

The worldwide introduction to the Pill was a defining moment as it completely changed the ability to alter population growth and some consider it to be the defining innovation for women's right to dictate their lives by controlling their fertility.

Dame Valerie Beral, Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford University and Cancer Research UK, once even claimed that the Pill was "the most important thing in the latter half of the century - no question about it”.