1900s • 1900: American botanist
Anna Murray Vail became the first librarian of the
New York Botanical Garden. A key supporter of the institution's establishment, she had earlier donated her entire collection of 3000 botanical specimens to the garden. • 1900: Physicists
Marie Skłodowska–Curie and
Isabelle Stone attended the first International Congress of Physics in
Paris, France. They were the only two women out of 836 participants. • 1901: Czech botanist and zoologist
Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková became the first woman in the Czech Republic to receive a PhD. • 1901: American astronomer
Annie Jump Cannon published her first catalog of stellar spectra, which
classified stars by temperature. This method was universally and permanently adopted by other astronomers. • 1903:
Grace Coleridge Frankland née Toynbee was an English microbiologist. Her most notable work was
Bacteria in Daily Life. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the
1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society. • 1903: Polish-born physicist and chemist
Marie Skłodowska–Curie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize when she received the
Nobel Prize in Physics along with her husband,
Pierre Curie, "for their joint researches on the
radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel", and
Henri Becquerel, "for his discovery of spontaneous
radioactivity". • 1904: American geographer, geologist and educator
Zonia Baber published her article "The Scope of Geography", in which she laid out her educational theories on the teaching of geography. She argued that students required a more interdisciplinary, experiential approach to learning geography: instead of a reliance on textbooks, students needed field-trips, lab work and map-making knowledge. Baber's educational ideas transformed the way schools taught geography. • 1904: British chemists
Ida Smedley,
Ida Freund and
Martha Whiteley organized
a petition asking the Chemical Society to admit women as Fellows. A total of 19 female chemists became signatories, but their petition was denied by the society. • 1904:
Marie Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author,
palaeobotanist and campaigner for
women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and coal classification. She held the post of Lecturer in Palaeobotany at the
University of Manchester from 1904 to 1910; in this capacity she became the first female academic of that university. In 1909 she was elected to the
Linnean Society of London. She was 26 at the time of her election to Fellowship (the youngest woman admitted at that time). • 1904: In a December meeting, the
Linnean Society of London elected its first women Fellows. These initial women included horticulturalist
Ellen Willmott, ornithologist
Emma Turner, biologist
Lilian Jane Gould, mycologists
Gulielma Lister and
Annie Lorrain Smith, and botanists
Mary Anne Stebbing,
Margaret Jane Benson and
Ethel Sargant. • 1905: American geneticist
Nettie Stevens discovered sex chromosomes. • 1906: Following the
San Francisco earthquake, American botanist and curator
Alice Eastwood rescued almost 1500 rare plant specimens from the burning
California Academy of Sciences building. Her curation system of keeping type specimens separate from other collections – unconventional at the time – allowed her to quickly find and retrieve the specimens. • 1906: Russian chemist
Irma Goldberg published a paper on two newly discovered chemical reactions involving the presence of copper and the creation of a nitrogen-carbon bond to an aromatic halide. These reactions were subsequently named the
Goldberg reaction and the Jourdan-Ullman-Goldberg reaction. • 1906: English physicist, mathematician and engineer
Hertha Ayrton became the first female recipient of the
Hughes Medal from the
Royal Society of London. She received the award for her experimental research on
electric arcs and sand ripples. • 1906: After her death, English
lepidopterist Emma Hutchinson's collection of 20,000 butterflies and moths was donated to the
London Natural History Museum. She had published little during her lifetime, and was barred from joining local scientific societies due to her gender, but was honoured for her work when a variant form of the
comma butterfly was named
hutchinsoni. • 1909:
Alice Wilson became the first female geologist hired by the
Geological Survey of Canada. She is widely credited as being the first Canadian female geologist. • 1909: Danish physicist
Kirstine Meyer became the first Danish woman to receive a doctorate degree in natural sciences. She wrote her dissertation on the topic of "the development of the temperature concept" within the history of physics. This made her the first person to win the Nobel Prize twice. As of 2022, she is the only woman to win it twice and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. • 1911: Norwegian biologist
Kristine Bonnevie became the first woman member of the
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. • 1912: American astronomer
Henrietta Swan Leavitt studied the bright-dim cycle periods of Cepheid stars, then found a way to calculate the distance from such stars to Earth. • 1912: Canadian botanist and geneticist
Carrie Derick was appointed a professor of morphological botany at
McGill University. She was the first woman to become a full professor in any department at a Canadian university. • 1913:
Regina Fleszarowa became the first Polish woman to receive a PhD in natural sciences. • 1913:
Izabela Textorisová, the first Slovakian female botanist, published "Flora Data from the County of Turiec" in the journal
Botanikai Közlemények. Her work uncovered more than 100 previously unknown species of plants from the
Turiec area. • 1913: Canadian physician and chemist
Maud Menten co-authored a paper on
enzyme kinetics, leading to the development of the
Michaelis–Menten kinetics equation. • 1914–1918: During World War I, a team of seven British women chemists conducted pioneering research on chemical antidotes and weaponized gases. The project leader,
Martha Annie Whiteley, was awarded the
Order of the British Empire for her wartime contributions. • 1914-1918: Dame
Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, (née Fraser) was a prominent English
botanist and
mycologist. For her wartime service she was the first woman to be awarded a military
DBE in January 1918. She served as Commandant of the
Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) from September 1918 until December 1919. • 1914: British-born mycologist
Ethel Doidge became the first woman in South Africa to receive a doctorate in any subject, receiving her
doctorate of science degree from the University of the Good Hope. She wrote her thesis on "A bacterial disease of mango". • 1916:
Isabella Preston became the first female professional plant hybridist in Canada, producing the George C. Creelman trumpet lily. Her lily later received an
Award of Merit from the
Royal Horticultural Society. • 1916:
Chika Kuroda became the first Japanese woman to earn a bachelor of science degree, studying chemistry at the
Tohoku Imperial University. After graduation, she was subsequently appointed an assistant professor at the university. • 1917: American
zoologist Mary J. Rathbun received her PhD from the
George Washington University. Despite never having attended college – or any formal schooling beyond high school – Rathbun had authored more than 80 scientific publications, described over 674 new species of
crustacean, and developed a system for crustacean-related records at the
Smithsonian Museum. • 1917: Dutch biologist and phytopathologist
Johanna Westerdijk became the first female university professor in the
Netherlands. She was appointed an
extraordinary professor of
phytopathology at the
University of Utrecht. • 1918: German physicist and mathematician
Emmy Noether created
Noether's theorem explaining the connection between
symmetry and
conservation laws. • 1919: Dutch biologist and geneticist
Jantina Tammes became the university professor in the
Netherlands. She was appointed an
extraordinary professor of
variability and heredity at the
University of Groningen. She became the first person in the Netherlands to occupy a chair in genetic. Moreover, she became the second female professor in the country, and the first one at the University of Groningen. She held this position until 1937, when she resigned at the age of sixty-six. • 1919:
Kathleen Maisey Curtis became the first New Zealand woman to earn a
Doctorate of Science degree (DSc), completing her thesis on
Synchytrium endobioticum (potato wart disease) at the
Imperial College of Science and Technology. Her research was cited as "the most outstanding result in mycological research that had been presented for ten years".
1920s • 1920:
Louisa Bolus was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of South Africa for her contributions to botany. Over the course of her lifetime, Bolus identified and named more than 1,700 new South African plant species - more species than any other botanist in South Africa. • 1921:
Edelmira Inés Mórtola (1894–1973), the first woman to become a geologist in Argentina was awarded her PhD at the University of Buenos Aires, the first woman to received her doctorate there. The university named the Mórtola Mineralogy Museum in her honor. • 1923:
María Teresa Ferrari, an Argentine physician, earned the first diploma awarded to a woman by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris for her studies of the
urinary tract. • 1924: Florence Bascom became the first woman elected to the Council of the
Geological Society of America. • 1925: American medical scientist
Florence Sabin became the first woman elected to the
National Academy of Sciences. • 1925: British-American astronomer and astrophysicist
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin established that
hydrogen is the most common element in stars, and thus the most abundant element in the universe. • 1926: American scientist
Katharine Burr Blodgett became the first woman to earn a PhD in physics at the
University of Cambridge, under the supervision of
Sir Ernest Rutherford. • 1927:
Kono Yasui became the first Japanese woman to earn a
doctorate in science, studying at the
Tokyo Imperial University and completing her thesis on "Studies on the structure of lignite, brown coal, and bituminous coal in Japan". • 1927:
Bohumila Bednářová, the first Czech woman to become professionally involved in astronomy, co-founds the
Prague Observatory • 1928:
Alice Evans became the first woman elected president of the
Society of American Bacteriologists. • 1928:
Helen Battle became the first woman to earn a PhD in marine biology in Canada. • 1928: British biologist
Kathleen Carpenter published the first English-language textbook devoted to freshwater ecology:
Life in Inland Waters. • 1929: American botanist
Margaret Clay Ferguson became the first female president of the
Botanical Society of America. • 1929: Scottish-Nigerian
Agnes Yewande Savage became the first West African woman to graduate from medical school, obtaining her degree at the
University of Edinburgh.
1930s • 1930:
Concepción Mendizábal Mendoza became the first woman in Mexico to earn a
civil engineering degree. • 1932:
Michiyo Tsujimura became the first Japanese woman to earn a
doctorate in agriculture. She studied at the Tokyo Imperial University, and her doctoral thesis was entitled "On the Chemical Components of Green Tea". • 1933: Hungarian scientist
Elizabeth Rona received the
Haitinger Prize from the
Austrian Academy of Sciences for her method of extracting
polonium. • 1933: American bacteriologist
Ruth Ella Moore became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the natural sciences, completing her doctorate in bacteriology at
Ohio State University. • 1933: Egyptian medical doctor
Tawhida Abdel-Rahman becomes the first female doctor employed by the Egyptian Government Health Ministry. • 1935: French chemist
Irène Joliot-Curie received the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with
Frédéric Joliot-Curie "for their synthesis of new
radioactive elements". • 1935: American plant hybridist
Grace Sturtevant, the "First Lady of Iris", received the
American Iris Society's gold medal for her lifetime's work. • 1936:
Edith Patch became the first female president of the
Entomological Society of America. • 1936: Mycologist
Kathleen Maisey Curtis was elected the first female Fellow at the
Royal Society of New Zealand. • 1936: Danish
seismologist and
geophysicist Inge Lehmann discovered that the Earth has a solid inner core distinct from its molten
outer core. • 1937: Canadian forensic pathologist
Frances Gertrude McGill assisted the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police in establishing their first forensic detection laboratory. • 1937:
Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain became the first female Haitian
anthropologist and the first Haitian person to complete a PhD, receiving her doctoral degree from the
University of Paris. • 1937:
Marietta Blau and her student
Hertha Wambacher, both Austrian physicists, received the
Lieben Prize of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences for their work on cosmic ray observations using the technique of nuclear emulsions. • 1938:
Elizabeth Abimbola Awoliyi became the first woman to be licensed to practise medicine in
Nigeria after graduating from
Trinity College Dublin and the first West African female medical officer with a license of the Royal Surgeon (Dublin). • 1938: Geologist
Alice Wilson became the first woman appointed as Fellow to the
Royal Society of Canada. • 1938: Botanists
Elzada U Clover and
Lois Jotter were the first women to catalog plant life in the Grand Canyon and the first to raft the entire length of the Colorado River • 1939: Austrian-Swedish physicist
Lise Meitner, along with
Otto Hahn, led the small group of scientists who first discovered
nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extra
neutron; the results were published in early 1939. • 1939: French physicist
Marguerite Perey discovered
francium. • 1939:
Kamala Sohonie was an Indian
biochemist who in 1939 became the first Indian woman to receive a PhD in a scientific discipline.
1940s • 1940: Turkish
Archaeologist,
Sumerologist,
Assyriologist, and writer
Muazzez İlmiye Çığ. Upon receiving her degree in 1940, she began a multi-decade career at Museum of the Ancient Orient, one of three such institutions comprising
Istanbul Archaeology Museums, as a resident specialist in the field of
cuneiform tablets, thousands of which were being stored untranslated and unclassified in the facility's archives. In the intervening years, due to her efforts in the deciphering and publication of the tablets, the museum became a
Middle Eastern languages learning center attended by ancient history researchers from every part of the world. • 1941: American scientist
Ruth Smith Lloyd became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in anatomy. • 1942: Austrian-American actress and inventor
Hedy Lamarr and composer
George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for
Allied torpedoes that used
spread spectrum and
frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the
Axis powers. Although the
US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into
Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of
CDMA and
Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. • 1942: American geologist
Marguerite Williams became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in geology in the United States. She completed her doctorate, entitled
A History of Erosion in the Anacostia Drainage Basin, at
Catholic University. • 1942: Native American aerospace engineer
Mary Golda Ross became employed at
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, where she provided troubleshooting for military aircraft. She went on to work for
NASA, developing operational requirements, flight plans, and a Planetary Flight Handbook for spacecraft missions such as the
Apollo program. • 1943: British geologist
Eileen Guppy was promoted to the rank of assistant geologist, therefore becoming the first female geology graduate appointed to the scientific staff of the
British Geological Survey. • 1943: American geologist and crystallographer
Elizabeth A. Wood became the first female to be hired as a member of the technical staff (MTS) at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. • 1944: Indian chemist
Asima Chatterjee became the first Indian woman to receive a
doctorate of science, completing her studies at the
University of Calcutta. She went on to establish the Department of Chemistry at
Lady Brabourne College. • 1945: American physicists and mathematicians
Frances Spence,
Ruth Teitelbaum,
Marlyn Meltzer,
Betty Holberton,
Jean Bartik and
Kathleen Antonelli programmed the electronic general-purpose computer
ENIAC, becoming some of the world's first computer programmers. (The first were uncredited operators, mostly members of the
Women's Royal Naval Service, of the
Colossus computer in 1943–1945, but that machine was not a stored-program computer and its existence was a state secret until the 1970s.) • 1945:
Marjory Stephenson and
Kathleen Lonsdale were elected as the first female Fellows of the
Royal Society. • 1947: Austrian-American biochemist
Gerty Cori became the first woman to receive the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which she received along with
Carl Ferdinand Cori "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of
glycogen", and
Bernardo Alberto Houssay "for his discovery of the part played by the
hormone of the
anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of
sugar". • 1947: American biochemist
Marie Maynard Daly became the first African-American woman to complete a PhD in chemistry in the United States. She completed her dissertation, entitled "A Study of the Products Formed by the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch" at
Columbia University. • 1947:
Berta Karlik, an Austrian physicist, was awarded the
Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for her discovery of astatine. • 1947:
Susan Ofori-Atta became the first Ghanaian woman to earn a medical degree when she graduated from the
University of Edinburgh. • 1948: American limnologist
Ruth Patrick of the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia led a multidisciplinary team of scientists on an extensive pollution survey of the Conestoga River watershed in Pennsylvania. Patrick would become a leading authority on the ecological effects of river pollution, receiving the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1975. • 1949: Botanist became the first Azerbaijani woman to receive a PhD in biological studies. She went on to write the first national Azerbaijani-language textbooks on botany and biology. • 1949:
Winifred Goldring (February 1, 1888 – January 30, 1971), was an American
paleontologist and became the first female president of the
Paleontological Society, her work included a description of
stromatolites, as well as the study of
Devonian crinoids. She was the first woman in the US to be appointed as a State Paleontologist. ==Late 20th century==