Kate L. Turabian, author of the A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, now in its 7th edition, would have celebrated her 116th birthday today. The guidelines she championed for the successful completion and submission of academic papers have become the gold standard for generations of students and their teachers, and with more than 8 million copies sold to date, her Manual is one of the bestselling writing references on record.
Turabian died in 1987 at the age of 94. John Marshall, now the books editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote a warm tribute in the October 27, 1987 edition:

Kate L. Turabian was our trusted guide and mentor, the absolute authority, the one who knew all there was to know about the strange world of proper term papers.… A Manual for Writers was one of the first books we bought in college and it was one of the only books we kept with us through all four years and probably beyond. To write a term paper without a well-worn copy of Turabian handy was unthinkable. Our writing on term papers might be weak, our research haphazard, our insights sophomoric, but, thanks to Kate L. Turabian, our footnotes could always be absolutely flawless.

We have more info about Kate on our Turabian website.