Rosa Welt-Straus

Rosa Welt-Straus (1856–1938) was a suffragist and feminist. Born in the Austrian Empire, she was the first girl in that country to graduate from high school, and the first Austrian woman to earn a medical degree, as well as the first female eye doctor in Europe.

She earned her medical degree in 1878 from the University of Bern. In July 1920 she traveled to London to participate in the assembly at which the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) was established, and later that year she represented the Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Eretz Israel at the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress in Geneva. She represented the International Woman Suffrage Alliance on international committees, participated in all its Congresses, and was often included in delegations to the prime ministers of the countries which held the congresses. Welt-Straus died in Geneva in 1938.