Greatest Female Scientists A-Z 👩‍🔬

Anning became an authority in geological circles and was often consulted related issues, but as a woman, she wasn’t permitted to join the Geological Society of London and correspondingly lost out on the credit for some of her contributions.

Anning became more famous in the early 20th century and is the seashell-seller behind the well-known tongue-twister “She sells seashells on the seashore” in 1908.

Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and to do so in two categories: Physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911. When she died from aplastic anemia, caused by her frequent exposure to radiation, she was also the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. One of the greatest female scientists of the 19th century.

Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing genome editing using Cas9 to make cuts in any DNA sequence which can be used for basic research, biotech products and to create treatments for diseases, potentially including Coronaviruses.

Châtelet lived and collaborated with Voltaire from 1733 and became the first woman to have a scientific paper published by the Academy.

In 1988, Elion shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for this work. She also developed azathioprine, an immunosuppressive drug used for organ transplants and was the first woman to be recognized in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Goodall won numerous awards for her work, the best known being her 45-year study on the social lives of chimpanzees in Tanzania. Surprising to many, her research revealed that although chimpanzees are largely “nicer than human beings”, they could also be brutal, and sometimes have a darker side to their nature.

After Marie Curie, Göppert was the 2nd female Nobel laureate in physics. Her doctorate was on the two-photon absorption by atoms and today, the unit for this absorption is named the GM unit after her.

Herschel also played a great role in cataloguing nebulae and clusters of stars. Her work was recognized with various honors such as a Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, and another from the King of Prussia on her 96th birthday. One of the greatest female scientists of the 18th century.

In 1925 Cannon became the first female recipient of an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. In 1929 Annie Jump Cannon was chosen by the League of Women Voters as one of the “greatest living American women” and in 1994 Cannon was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Kirch was educated by her father, a minister, who believed girls deserved the same education as boys. Her husband, Gottfried Kirch, was a famous German astronomer and mathematician and 30 years older. They worked together as a team and had 4 children, all of whom also studied astronomy.

In 1702, Kirch became the first woman to discover a new comet, now known as the “Comet of 1702”, and published widely on astronomy. When her husband died, she tried to take his place at the Royal Academy of Sciences but the Academy refused. One of the greatest female scientists of the 17th century.

Scientists use Leavitt’s law to compute distances to remote galaxies which are too remote for parallax observations. Hubble used Leavitt’s luminosity–period relationship together with Vesto Slipher’s galactic spectral shifts to formulate Hubble’s law to establish the universe is expanding.

In 1983 McClintock was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in this category. She was also awarded prestigious fellowships, and elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer and the first woman to be elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She later fought for equal pay at Vassar College, where she taught until one year before her death.

Randall, with others, is the winner of the Andrew Gemant Award, the Lilienfeld Prize, and the Klopsted Memorial Award. Randall is one of the greatest female scientists still alive today.

Astronomer Otto Struve described Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s work as “The most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy“. Payne-Gaposchkin became an American citizen in 1931.

Wu was often compared to Marie Curie and given nicknames like “the Chinese Madame Curie”, and the “Queen of Nuclear Research”. One of the greatest female scientists based in China.