Wanda Rutkiewicz

Wanda Rutkiewicz (1943 to 1992) was a Polish mountaineer and computer engineer, born in Lithuania to a Polish family that later settled in Wroclaw. A multi-sport athlete in her youth, who threw the discus, jumped and played volleyball for the Academic Sports Union in Wroclaw, she turned to climbing after a chance meeting on a roadside in 1961. She trained as an electrical engineer at the Wroclaw University of Technology. In October 1978 she became the first Pole and the first European woman to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, the third woman in all. In 1986 she became the first woman to climb K2, doing so without supplemental oxygen. Her stated goal was to become the first woman to climb all fourteen of the eight-thousanders, and she summited several, including Nanga Parbat, Shishapangma, Gasherbrum I and II, Cho Oyu and Annapurna I. She disappeared in May 1992 while attempting Kangchenjunga, and her body has not been found. She was the subject of a Google Doodle in 2019.