Ancient history The involvement of
women in the field of medicine has been recorded in several early civilizations. An
ancient Egyptian physician,
Peseshet (), described in an inscription as "lady overseer of the female physicians", is the earliest known female physician named in the
history of science.
Agamede was cited by
Homer as a healer in
ancient Greece before the
Trojan War (c. 1194–1184 BCE). The study of
natural philosophy in
ancient Greece was open to women. Recorded examples include
Aglaonike, who predicted
eclipses; and
Theano,
mathematician and physician, who was a pupil (possibly also wife) of
Pythagoras, and one of the school in
Crotone founded by Pythagoras, which included many other women. A passage in Pollux speaks about those who invented the process of coining money, mentioning
Pheidon and
Demodike from Cyme, wife of the Phrygian king, Midas, and daughter of King Agamemnon of Cyme. A daughter of a certain
Agamemnon, king of
Aeolian Cyme, married a Phrygian king called Midas. This link may have facilitated the Greeks "borrowing" their alphabet from the
Phrygians because the Phrygian letter shapes are closest to the inscriptions from Aeolis. During the
Egyptian dynasty, women were involved in applied chemistry, such as the making of beer and the preparation of medicinal compounds. Women have been recorded to have made major contributions to
alchemy. Such distillation equipment was called
kerotakis (simple still) and the
tribikos (a complex distillation device). She is the earliest female mathematician about whom detailed information has survived. Hypatia was the head of a philosophical school and taught many students. In 415 CE, she became entangled in a political dispute between
Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, and
Orestes, the Roman governor, which resulted in a mob of Cyril's supporters stripping her, dismembering her, and burning the pieces of her body. The Arabic world deserves credit for preserving scientific advancements. Arabic scholars produced original scholarly work and generated copies of manuscripts from
classical periods. During this period, Christianity underwent a period of resurgence, and Western civilization was bolstered as a result. This phenomenon was, in part, due to monasteries and nunneries that nurtured the skills of reading and writing, and the monks and nuns who collected and copied important writings by scholars of the past. Another famous German abbess was
Hroswitha of Gandersheim (935–1000 A.D.) The attitude toward educating women in medical fields in Italy appears to have been more liberal than in other places. The physician
Trotula di Ruggiero, is supposed to have held a chair at the
Medical School of Salerno in the 11th century, where she taught many noble Italian women, a group sometimes referred to as the "
ladies of Salerno". Other Italian women whose contributions in medicine have been recorded include
Abella,
Jacobina Félicie,
Alessandra Giliani,
Rebecca de Guarna,
Margarita,
Mercuriade (14th century),
Constance Calenda,
Calrice di Durisio (15th century),
Constanza,
Maria Incarnata and
Thomasia de Mattio. Despite the success of some women, cultural biases affecting their education and participation in science were prominent in the Middle Ages. For example, Saint
Thomas Aquinas, a Christian scholar, wrote, referring to women, "She is mentally incapable of holding a position of authority."
Isabella Cortese, an Italian alchemist, is best known for her book
I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese or
The Secrets of Isabella Cortese. Cortese was able to manipulate nature in order to create several medicinal, alchemy and cosmetic "secrets" or experiments. Isabella's book of secrets belongs to a larger book of secrets that became extremely popular among the elite during the 16th century. Despite the low percentage of literate women during Cortese's era, the majority of alchemical and cosmetic "secrets" in the book of secrets were geared towards women. This included but was not limited to pregnancy, fertility, and childbirth. In Germany, the tradition of female participation in craft production enabled some women to become involved in observational science, especially
astronomy. Between 1650 and 1710, women were 14% of German astronomers. The most famous female astronomer in Germany was
Maria Winkelmann. She was educated by her father and uncle and received training in astronomy from a nearby self-taught astronomer. Her chance to be a practicing astronomer came when she married
Gottfried Kirch, Prussia's foremost astronomer. She became his assistant at the
astronomical observatory operated in Berlin by the
Academy of Science. She made original contributions, including the discovery of a comet. When her husband died, Winkelmann applied for a position as an assistant astronomer at the Berlin Academy – for which she had the necessary experience. As a woman – with no university degree – she was denied the post. Members of the
Berlin Academy feared that they would establish a bad example by hiring a woman. "Mouths would gape", they said. Winkelmann's problems with the Berlin Academy reflect the obstacles women faced in being accepted in scientific work, which was considered to be chiefly for men. No woman was invited to either the
Royal Society of London nor the
French Academy of Sciences until the twentieth century. Most people in the seventeenth century viewed a life devoted to any kind of scholarship as being at odds with the domestic duties women were expected to perform. A founder of modern botany and
zoology, the German
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), spent her life investigating nature. When she was thirteen, Merian began growing caterpillars and studying their
metamorphosis into butterflies. She kept a "Study Book" which recorded her investigations into natural philosophy. In her first publication,
The New Book of Flowers, she used imagery to catalog the lives of plants and insects. After her husband died, and her brief stint living in
Siewert, she and her daughter journeyed to
Paramaribo for two years to observe insects, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. She returned to
Amsterdam and published
The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname, which "revealed to Europeans for the first time the astonishing diversity of the rain forest." She was a
botanist and
entomologist who was known for her artistic illustrations of plants and insects. Uncommon for that era, she traveled to South America and Suriname, where, assisted by her daughters, she illustrated the plant and animal life of those regions. Overall, the
Scientific Revolution did little to change people's ideas about the nature of women – more specifically – their capacity to contribute to science just as men do. According to
Jackson Spielvogel, 'Male scientists used the new science to spread the view that women were by nature inferior and subordinate to men and suited to play a domestic role as nurturing mothers. The widespread distribution of books ensured the continuation of these ideas'.
Eighteenth century , the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe Although women excelled in many scientific areas during the eighteenth century, they were discouraged from learning about plant reproduction.
Carl Linnaeus' system of plant classification based on sexual characteristics drew attention to botanical licentiousness, and people feared that women would learn immoral lessons from nature's example. Women were often depicted as both innately emotional and incapable of objective reasoning, or as natural mothers reproducing a natural, moral society. The eighteenth century was characterized by three divergent views towards women: that women were mentally and socially inferior to men, that they were equal but different, and that women were potentially equal in both mental ability and contribution to society. While individuals such as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed women's roles were confined to motherhood and service to their male partners, the Enlightenment was a period in which women experienced expanded roles in the sciences. The rise of salon culture in Europe brought philosophers and their conversation to an intimate setting where men and women met to discuss contemporary political, social, and scientific topics. While
Jean-Jacques Rousseau attacked women-dominated salons as producing 'effeminate men' that stifled serious discourse, salons were characterized in this era by the mixing of the sexes.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu defied convention by introducing
smallpox inoculation through
variolation to Western medicine after witnessing it during her travels in the
Ottoman Empire. In 1718 Wortley Montague had her son inoculated This was the first such operation done in Britain. After publicly defending forty nine theses in the Palazzo Pubblico,
Laura Bassi was awarded a doctorate of philosophy in 1732 at the
University of Bologna. Thus, Bassi became the second woman in the world to earn a philosophy doctorate after
Elena Cornaro Piscopia in 1678, 54 years prior. She subsequently defended twelve additional theses at the
Archiginnasio, the main building of the University of Bologna which allowed her to petition for a teaching position at the university. In 1776, at the age of 65, she was appointed to the chair in experimental physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences with her husband as a teaching assistant. She is credited as the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, the
Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana, (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth). Published in 1748 it "was regarded as the best introduction extant to the works of
Euler." The goal of this work was, according to Agnesi herself, to give a systematic illustration of the different results and theorems of
infinitesimal calculus. In 1750 she became the second woman to be granted a professorship at a European university. Also appointed to the University of Bologna she never taught there. The German
Dorothea Erxleben was instructed in medicine by her father from an early age and Bassi's university professorship inspired Erxleben to fight for her right to practise
medicine. In 1742 she published a
tract arguing that women should be allowed to attend university. After being admitted to study by a
dispensation of
Frederick the Great, in her writings criticizes
John Locke's philosophy and emphasizes the necessity of the verification of knowledge. In 1741–42
Charlotta Frölich became the first woman to be published by the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with three books in agricultural science. In 1748
Eva Ekeblad became the first woman inducted into that academy. In 1746 Ekeblad had written to the academy about her discoveries of how to make flour and alcohol out of
potatoes. and of replacing the dangerous ingredients in cosmetics of the time by using
potato flour in 1752.
Émilie du Châtelet, a close friend of
Voltaire, was the first scientist to appreciate the significance of
kinetic energy, as opposed to
momentum. She repeated and described the importance of an experiment originally devised by
Willem 's Gravesande showing the impact of falling objects is proportional not to their velocity, but to the velocity squared. This understanding is considered to have made a profound contribution to
Newtonian mechanics. In 1749 she completed the French translation of Newton's
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (the
Principia), including her derivation of the notion of
conservation of energy from its principles of mechanics. Published ten years after her death, her translation and commentary of the
Principia contributed to the completion of the
Scientific Revolution in France and to its acceptance in Europe.
Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze and her husband
Antoine Lavoisier rebuilt the field of
chemistry, which had its roots in
alchemy and at the time was a convoluted science dominated by
George Stahl's theory of
phlogiston. Paulze accompanied Lavoisier in his lab, making entries into lab notebooks and sketching diagrams of his experimental designs. The training she had received allowed her to accurately and precisely draw experimental apparatuses, which ultimately helped many of Lavoisier's contemporaries to understand his methods and results. Paulze translated various works about phlogiston into French. One of her most important translation was that of
Richard Kirwan's
Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids, which she both translated and critiqued, adding footnotes as she went along and pointing out errors in the chemistry made throughout the paper. Paulze was instrumental in the 1789 publication of Lavoisier's
Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which presented a unified view of chemistry as a field. This work proved pivotal in the progression of chemistry, as it presented the idea of conservation of mass as well as a list of elements and a new system for
chemical nomenclature. She also kept strict records of the procedures followed, lending validity to the findings Lavoisier published. The astronomer
Caroline Herschel was born in
Hanover but moved to England where she acted as an assistant to her brother,
William Herschel. Throughout her writings, she repeatedly made it clear that she desired to earn an independent wage and be able to support herself. When the crown began paying her for her assistance to her brother in 1787, she became the first woman to do so at a time when even men rarely received wages for scientific enterprisesto receive a salary for services to science. During 1786–97 she discovered eight
comets, the first on 1 August 1786. She had unquestioned priority as discoverer of five of the comets and rediscovered
Comet Encke in 1795. Five of her comets were published in
Philosophical Transactions, a packet of paper bearing the superscription, "This is what I call the Bills and Receipts of my Comets" contains some data connected with the discovery of each of these objects. William was summoned to
Windsor Castle to demonstrate Caroline's comet to the
royal family. Caroline Herschel is often credited as the first woman to discover a comet; however,
Maria Kirch discovered a comet in the early 1700s, but is often overlooked because at the time, the discovery was attributed to her husband,
Gottfried Kirch.
Nineteenth century Early nineteenth century Science remained a largely amateur profession during the early part of the nineteenth century. Botany was considered a popular and fashionable activity, and one particularly suitable to women. In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was one of the most accessible areas of science for women in both England and North America. However, as the nineteenth century progressed, botany and other sciences became increasingly professionalized, and women were increasingly excluded. Women's contributions were limited by their exclusion from most formal scientific education, but began to be recognized through their occasional admittance into learned societies during this period. English mathematician
Ada, Lady Lovelace, a pupil of Somerville, corresponded with
Charles Babbage about applications for his
analytical engine. In her notes (1842–43) appended to her translation of
Luigi Menabrea's article on the engine, she foresaw wide applications for it as a general-purpose computer, including composing music. She has been credited as writing the first computer program, though this has been disputed. In Germany, institutes for "higher" education of women (
Höhere Mädchenschule, in some regions called
Lyzeum) were founded at the beginning of the century. The
Deaconess Institute at
Kaiserswerth was established in 1836 to instruct women in
nursing.
Elizabeth Fry visited the institute in 1840 and was inspired to found the London Institute of Nursing, and
Florence Nightingale studied there in 1851. In the US,
Maria Mitchell made her name by discovering a comet in 1847, but also contributed calculations to the
Nautical Almanac produced by the
United States Naval Observatory. She became the first woman member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850. Other notable female scientists during this period include: In
Prussia women could go to university from 1894 and were allowed to receive a PhD. In 1908 all remaining restrictions for women were terminated.
Alphonse Rebière published a book in 1897, in France, entitled
Les Femmes dans la science (Women in Science) which listed the contributions and publications of women in science. Other notable female scientists during this period include: • in Britain,
Hertha Marks Ayrton (mathematician, engineer),
Margaret Huggins (astronomer),
Beatrix Potter (mycologist) • in France,
Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts (American-born astronomer) • in Germany,
Amalie Dietrich (naturalist),
Agnes Pockels (physicist) • in Russia and Sweden,
Sofia Kovalevskaya (mathematician)
Late nineteenth-century Russians In the second half of the 19th century, a large proportion of the most successful women in the
STEM fields were Russians. Although many women received advanced training in medicine in the 1870s, in other fields women were barred and had to go to western Europemainly Switzerlandin order to pursue scientific studies. In her book about these "women of the [eighteen] sixties" (шестидесятницы), as they were called,
Ann Hibner Koblitz writes: Among the successful scientists were
Nadezhda Suslova (1843–1918), the first woman in the world to obtain a
medical doctorate fully equivalent to men's degrees;
Maria Bokova-Sechenova (1839–1929), a pioneer of women's medical education who received two doctoral degrees, one in medicine in Zürich and one in physiology in Vienna;
Julia Lermontova (1846–1919), the first woman in the world to receive a doctoral degree in chemistry; the marine biologist Sofia Pereiaslavtseva (1849–1903), director of the Sevastopol Biological Station and winner of the Kessler Prize of the Russian Society of Natural Scientists; and the mathematician
Sofia Kovalevskaia (1850–1891), the first woman in 19th century Europe to receive a doctorate in mathematics and the first to become a university professor in any field. With her sister,
Emily Blackwell, and
Marie Zakrzewska, Blackwell founded the
New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857 and the first women's medical college in 1868, providing both training and clinical experience for women doctors. She also published several books on medical education for women. In 1876, Elizabeth Bragg became the first woman to graduate with a
civil engineering degree in the United States, from the
University of California, Berkeley.
Early twentieth century Europe before World War II Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel prize in 1903 (physics), went on to become a double Nobel prize winner in 1911, both for her work on
radiation. She was the first person to win two Nobel prizes, a feat accomplished by only four others since then. She also was the first woman to teach at
Sorbonne University in
Paris. Alice Perry is understood to be the first woman to graduate with a degree in
civil engineering in the then
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1906 at
Queen's College, Galway, Ireland.
Lise Meitner played a major role in the discovery of nuclear fission. As head of the physics section at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin she collaborated closely with the head of chemistry
Otto Hahn on atomic physics until forced to flee Berlin in 1938. In 1939, in collaboration with her nephew
Otto Frisch, Meitner derived the theoretical explanation for an experiment performed by Hahn and
Fritz Strassman in Berlin, thereby demonstrating the occurrence of
nuclear fission. The possibility that Fermi's bombardment of uranium with neutrons in 1934 had instead produced fission by breaking up the nucleus into lighter elements, had actually first been raised in print in 1934, by chemist
Ida Noddack (co-discover of the element
rhenium), but this suggestion had been ignored at the time, as no group made a concerted effort to find any of these light radioactive fission products.
Maria Montessori was the first woman in
Southern Europe to qualify as a physician. She developed an interest in the diseases of children and believed in the necessity of educating those recognized to be ineducable. In the case of the latter she argued for the development of training for teachers along
Froebelian lines and developed the principle that was also to inform
her general educational program, which is the first the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect. Montessori introduced a teaching program that allowed defective children to read and write. She sought to teach skills not by having children repeatedly try it, but by developing exercises that prepare them.
Emmy Noether revolutionized abstract algebra, filled in gaps in relativity, and was responsible for a critical
theorem about conserved quantities in physics. One notes that the
Erlangen program attempted to identify
invariants under a group of transformations. On 16 July 1918, before a scientific organization in
Göttingen,
Felix Klein read a paper written by
Emmy Noether, because she was not allowed to present the paper herself. In particular, in what is referred to in physics as
Noether's theorem, this paper identified the conditions under which the
Poincaré group of transformations (now called a
gauge group) for
general relativity defines
conservation laws. Noether's papers made the requirements for the conservation laws precise. Among mathematicians, Noether is best known for her fundamental contributions to abstract algebra, where the adjective
noetherian is nowadays commonly used on many sorts of objects.
Mary Cartwright was a British mathematician who was the first to analyze a dynamical system with chaos.
Inge Lehmann, a Danish
seismologist, first suggested in 1936 that inside the Earth's molten core there may be a solid
inner core. Women such as
Margaret Fountaine continued to contribute detailed observations and illustrations in botany, entomology, and related observational fields.
Joan Beauchamp Procter, an outstanding
herpetologist, was the first woman curator of Reptiles for the
Zoological Society of London at
London Zoo.
Florence Sabin was an American medical scientist. Sabin was the first woman faculty member at Johns Hopkins in 1902, and the first woman full-time professor there in 1917. Her scientific and research experience is notable. Sabin published over 100 scientific papers and multiple books. In 1892,
Ellen Swallow Richards called for the "christening of a new science" – "
oekology" (ecology) in a Boston lecture. This new science included the study of "consumer nutrition" and environmental education. This interdisciplinary branch of science was later specialized into what is currently known as ecology, while the consumer nutrition focus split off and was eventually relabeled as
home economics, which provided another avenue for women to study science. Richards helped to form the
American Home Economics Association, which published a journal, the
Journal of Home Economics, and hosted conferences. Home economics departments were formed at many colleges, especially at land grant institutions. In her work at MIT, Ellen Richards also introduced the first biology course in its history as well as the focus area of sanitary engineering. Women also found opportunities in
botany and
embryology. In
psychology, women earned doctorates but were encouraged to specialize in educational and
child psychology and to take jobs in clinical settings, such as hospitals and social welfare agencies. In 1901,
Annie Jump Cannon first noticed that it was a star's temperature that was the principal distinguishing feature among different spectra. This led to re-ordering of the ABC types by temperature instead of hydrogen absorption-line strength. Due to Cannon's work, most of the then-existing classes of stars were thrown out as redundant. Afterward, astronomy was left with the seven
primary classes recognized today, in order: O, B, A, F, G, K, M; that has since been extended.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt first published her study of variable stars in 1908. This discovery became known as the "period-luminosity relationship" of
Cepheid variables. Our picture of the universe was changed forever, largely because of Leavitt's discovery. The accomplishments of
Edwin Hubble, renowned American astronomer, were made possible by Leavitt's groundbreaking research and Leavitt's Law. "If Henrietta Leavitt had provided the key to determine the size of the cosmos, then it was Edwin Powell Hubble who inserted it in the lock and provided the observations that allowed it to be turned", wrote David H. and Matthew D.H. Clark in their book
Measuring the Cosmos. Hubble often said that Leavitt deserved the Nobel for her work.
Gösta Mittag-Leffler of the
Swedish Academy of Sciences had begun paperwork on her nomination in 1924, only to learn that she had died of cancer three years earlier (the Nobel prize cannot be awarded posthumously). In 1925, Harvard graduate student
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin demonstrated for the first time from existing evidence on the spectra of stars that stars were made up almost exclusively of
hydrogen and
helium, one of the most fundamental theories in stellar
astrophysics. , who verified the problem with
Xenon in the
B nuclear reactor for the
Manhattan Project's physicists and engineers Wu would later also confirm
Albert Einstein's EPR Paradox in the first experimental corroboration, and prove the first violation of
Parity and Charge Conjugate Symmetry, thereby laying the conceptual basis for the future
Standard Model of
Particle Physics, and the rapid development of the new field. Women in other disciplines looked for ways to apply their expertise to the war effort. Three nutritionists,
Lydia J. Roberts,
Hazel K. Stiebeling, and
Helen S. Mitchell, developed the
Recommended Dietary Allowance in 1941 to help military and civilian groups make plans for group feeding situations. The RDAs proved necessary, especially, once foods began to be
rationed.
Rachel Carson worked for the
United States Bureau of Fisheries, writing brochures to encourage Americans to consume a wider variety of fish and seafood. She also contributed to research to assist the Navy in developing techniques and equipment for submarine detection. Women in psychology formed the
National Council of Women Psychologists, which organized projects related to the war effort. The NCWP elected
Florence Laura Goodenough president. In the social sciences, several women contributed to the
Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study, based at the
University of California. This study was led by sociologist
Dorothy Swaine Thomas, who directed the project and synthesized information from her informants, mostly graduate students in anthropology. These included
Tamie Tsuchiyama, the only
Japanese-American woman to contribute to the study, and
Rosalie Hankey Wax. In the
United States Navy, female scientists conducted a wide range of research.
Mary Sears, a
planktonologist, researched military oceanographic techniques as head of the Hydgrographic Office's Oceanographic Unit.
Florence van Straten, a chemist, worked as an aerological engineer. She studied the effects of weather on military combat.
Grace Hopper, a mathematician, became one of the first
computer programmers for the
Mark I computer.
Mina Spiegel Rees, also a mathematician, was the chief technical aide for the Applied Mathematics Panel of the
National Defense Research Committee.
Gerty Cori was a biochemist who discovered the mechanism by which glycogen, a derivative of glucose, is transformed in the muscles to form lactic acid, and is later reformed as a way to store energy. For this discovery she and her colleagues were awarded the Nobel prize in 1947, making her the third woman and the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. She was the first woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Cori is among several scientists whose works are commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp.
Late 20th century to early 21st century Nina Byers notes that before 1976, fundamental contributions of women to physics were rarely acknowledged. Women worked unpaid or in positions lacking the status they deserved. In the early 1980s, Margaret Rossiter presented two concepts for understanding the statistics behind women in science as well as the disadvantages women continued to suffer. She coined the terms "hierarchical segregation" and "territorial segregation." The former term describes the phenomenon in which the further one goes up the chain of command in the field, the smaller the presence of women. The latter describes the phenomenon in which women "cluster in scientific disciplines." A recent book titled
Athena Unbound provides a life-course analysis (based on interviews and surveys) of women in science from early childhood interest, through university, graduate school and the academic workplace. The thesis of this book is that "Women face a special series of gender-related barriers to entry and success in scientific careers that persist, despite recent advances". The
L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science were set up in 1998, with prizes alternating each year between the materials science and life sciences. One award is given for each geographical region of Africa and the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. By 2017, these awards had recognized almost 100 laureates from 30 countries. Two of the laureates have gone on to win the Nobel Prize,
Ada Yonath (2008) and
Elizabeth Blackburn (2009). Fifteen promising young researchers also receive an International Rising Talent fellowship each year within this programme. By the early twenty-first century, the number of women receiving major scientific awards had increased, although women remained underrepresented among Nobel Prize laureates in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. Several women scientists received Nobel Prizes in the 2020s, including
Emmanuelle Charpentier and
Jennifer Doudna, who were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of CRISPR gene-editing technology.
Europe after World War II South-African born physicist and radiobiologist
Tikvah Alper(1909–95), working in the UK, developed many fundamental insights into biological mechanisms, including the (negative) discovery that the infective agent in
scrapie could not be a virus or other eukaryotic structure. French virologist
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS, for which she shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In July 1967,
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered evidence for the
first known radio pulsar, which resulted in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for her
supervisor. She was president of the
Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010. Astrophysicist
Margaret Burbidge was a member of the
B2FH group responsible for originating the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, which explains how elements are formed in stars. She has held a number of prestigious posts, including the directorship of the
Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Mary Cartwright was a mathematician and student of
G. H. Hardy. Her work on nonlinear differential equations was influential in the field of
dynamical systems.
Rosalind Franklin was a crystallographer, whose work helped to elucidate the fine structures of coal,
graphite,
DNA and viruses. In 1953, the work she did on DNA allowed
Watson and
Crick to conceive their model of the structure of DNA. Her photograph of DNA gave Watson and Crick a basis for their DNA research, and they were awarded the Nobel Prize without giving due credit to Franklin, who had died of cancer in 1958.
Jane Goodall is a British primatologist considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. She is the founder of the
Jane Goodall Institute and the
Roots & Shoots programme.
Dorothy Hodgkin analyzed the molecular structure of complex chemicals by studying diffraction patterns caused by passing X-rays through crystals. She won the 1964 Nobel prize for chemistry for discovering the structure of
vitamin B12, becoming the third woman to win the prize for chemistry.
Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie Curie, won the 1935 Nobel Prize for chemistry with her husband
Frédéric Joliot for their work in radioactive isotopes leading to
nuclear fission. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. Palaeoanthropologist
Mary Leakey discovered the first skull of a fossil ape on Rusinga Island and also a noted robust Australopithecine. Italian neurologist
Rita Levi-Montalcini received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of Nerve growth factor (NGF). Her work allowed for a further potential understanding of different diseases such as tumors, delayed healing, malformations, and others. This research led to her winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine alongside Stanley Cohen in 1986. While making advancements in medicine and science, Rita Levi-Montalcini was also active politically throughout her life. She was appointed a
Senator for Life in the Italian Senate in 2001 and is the oldest Nobel laureate ever to have lived. Zoologist
Anne McLaren conducted studied in genetics which led to advances in
in vitro fertilization. She became the first female officer of the
Royal Society in 331 years.
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for research on the genetic control of embryonic development. She also started the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation (Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Stiftung), to aid promising young female German scientists with children.
Bertha Swirles was a theoretical physicist who made a number of contributions to early
quantum theory. She co-authored the well-known textbook
Methods of Mathematical Physics with her husband
Sir Harold Jeffreys.
United States after World War II Immediately after the end of World War II, the country saw a "retrenchment of positions for women" as male veterans returned and began filling open job positions. While men benefited from the opportunities of the
G.I. Bill, some women had success with programs such as
Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), a women's branch of the US Navy Reserve. The
Society of Women Engineers held their first meeting in 1950. Although NASA was established in 1958, women were only admitted to the astronaut program in 1983, 25 years later.
Linda B. Buck is a
neurobiologist who was awarded the 2004
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with
Richard Axel for their work on
olfactory receptors.
Rachel Carson was a marine biologist from the United States. She is credited with being the founder of the environmental movement. The biologist and activist published
Silent Spring, a work on the dangers of pesticides, in 1962. The publishing of her environmental science book led to the questioning of usage of harmful pesticides and other chemicals in agricultural settings. Carson later died from cancer in 1964 at 57 years old.
Ann Druyan is an American writer, lecturer and producer specializing in
cosmology and
popular science. Druyan has credited her knowledge of science to the 20 years she spent studying with her late husband,
Carl Sagan, rather than formal academic training. She was responsible for the selection of music on the
Voyager Golden Record for the
Voyager 1 and
Voyager 2 exploratory missions. Druyan also sponsored the
Cosmos 1 spacecraft.
Gertrude B. Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for her work on the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens.
Sandra Moore Faber, with
Robert Jackson, discovered the
Faber–Jackson relation between luminosity and stellar dispersion velocity in
elliptical galaxies. She also headed the team which discovered the
Great Attractor, a large concentration of mass which is pulling a number of nearby galaxies in its direction. Zoologist
Dian Fossey worked with gorillas in Africa from 1967 until her murder in 1985. Astronomer
Andrea Ghez received a MacArthur "genius grant" in 2008 for her work in surmounting the limitations of earthbound telescopes.
Maria Goeppert Mayer was the second female Nobel Prize winner in Physics, for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. Earlier in her career, she had worked in unofficial or volunteer positions at the university where her husband was a professor. Goeppert Mayer is one of several scientists whose works are commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp.
Sulamith Low Goldhaber and her husband
Gerson Goldhaber formed a research team on the
K meson and other high-energy particles in the 1950s.
Carol Greider and the Australian born
Elizabeth Blackburn, along with Jack W. Szostak, received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Rear Admiral
Grace Murray Hopper developed the first computer compiler while working for the
Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation, released in 1952.
Deborah S. Jin's team at
JILA, in
Boulder, Colorado, in 2003 produced the first
fermionic condensate, a new
state of matter.
Stephanie Kwolek, a researcher at DuPont, invented poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide – better known as
Kevlar.
Lynn Margulis is a biologist best known for her work on
endosymbiotic theory, which is now generally accepted for how certain organelles were formed.
Barbara McClintock's studies of maize genetics demonstrated genetic
transposition in the 1940s and 1950s. Before then, McClintock obtained her PhD from
Cornell University in 1927. Her discovery of transposition provided a greater understanding of mobile loci within chromosomes and the ability for genetics to be fluid. She dedicated her life to her research, and she was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983. McClintock was the first American woman to receive a Nobel Prize that was not shared by anyone else.
Nita Ahuja is a renowned surgeon-scientist known for her work on CIMP in cancer, she is currently the chief of surgical oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. First woman ever to be the chief of this prestigious department.
Carolyn Porco is a planetary scientist best known for her work on the
Voyager program and the
Cassini–Huygens mission to
Saturn. She is also known for her popularization of science, in particular space exploration. Physicist
Helen Quinn, with
Roberto Peccei, postulated
Peccei-Quinn symmetry. One consequence is a particle known as the
axion, a candidate for the
dark matter that pervades the universe. Quinn was the first woman to receive the
Dirac Medal by the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the first to receive the
Oskar Klein Medal.
Lisa Randall is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, best known for her work on the
Randall–Sundrum model. She was the first tenured female physics professor at
Princeton University.
Sally Ride was an astrophysicist and the first American woman, and then-youngest American, to travel to outer space. Ride wrote or co-wrote several books on space aimed at children, with the goal of encouraging them to study science. Ride participated in the
Gravity Probe B (GP-B) project, which provided more evidence that the predictions of
Albert Einstein's general theory of
relativity are correct. Through her observations of galaxy rotation curves, astronomer
Vera Rubin discovered the
Galaxy rotation problem, now taken to be one of the key pieces of evidence for the existence of
dark matter. She was the first female allowed to observe at the
Palomar Observatory.
Sara Seager is a Canadian-American astronomer who is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and known for her work on extrasolar planets. Astronomer
Jill Tarter is best known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tarter was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by
Time Magazine in 2004. She is the former director of
SETI.
Rosalyn Yalow was the co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally) for development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique.
Australia after World War II •
Amanda Barnard, an Australia-based theoretical physicist specializing in nanomaterials, winner of the
Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year. •
Isobel Bennett, was one of the first women to go to
Macquarie Island with the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (
ANARE). She is one of Australia's best known marine biologists. •
Dorothy Hill, an Australian geologist who became the first female professor at an Australian university. •
Ruby Payne-Scott, was an Australian who was an early leader in the fields of radio astronomy and radiophysics. She was one of the first radio astronomers and the first woman in the field. •
Penny Sackett, an astronomer who became the first female
chief scientist of Australia in 2008. She is a US-born Australian citizen. •
Fiona Stanley, winner of the 2003
Australian of the Year award, is an
epidemiologist noted for her research into child and maternal health, birth disorders, and her work in the public health field. •
Michelle Simmons, winner of the 2018
Australian of the Year award, is a
quantum physicist known for her research and leadership on
atomic-scale silicon quantum devices.
Israel after World War II •
Ada Yonath, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome.
Latin America Maria Nieves Garcia-Casal, the first scientist and nutritionist woman from Latin America to lead the Latin America Society of Nutrition.
Angela Restrepo Moreno is a microbiologist from Colombia. She first gained interest in tiny organisms when she had the opportunity to view them through a microscope that belonged to her grandfather. While Restrepo has a variety of research, her main area of research is fungi and their causes of diseases. When she initially began studying rotavirus, it had only been discovered four years earlier. For this research she focused on how copper interacts with the proteins of the neurodegenerative diseases mentioned before. Liliana's awards include the Mexican Academy of Sciences Research Prize for Science in 2017, the
Marcos Moshinsky Chair award in 2016, the
Fulbright Scholarship in 2014, and the
L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award in 2007. == Nobel laureates ==