(born 1943) Born Billie Jean Moffit, in Long Beach, California, King won six Wimbledon championships, four US Open titles, was ranked the no. 1 women’s tennis player in the world for five years and, through her struggle for gender equality, transformed women’s sports. Her 1973 match against the fifty-five-year-old Bobby Riggs, the so-called “Battle of the Sexes,” brought widespread attention to women athletes. King’s straight set trouncing at the Houston Astrodome, in circus-like conditions, drew an estimated television audience of 50 million. An inspiration to players like Martina Navratilova, King led in the formation of the Virginia Slims professional tennis tour, started a magazine (WomenSports) and established a women’s sports foundation.