The Women Who Conquered the Science Nobels
Out of more than six hundred science laureates, only a few dozen have been women. These are the ones who broke through — and how.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine have been awarded to well over six hundred people. Fewer than thirty of them have been women. That scarcity makes each name on this list a story of scientific brilliance compounded by a second, unadvertised achievement: getting past the door.
The pioneers
- Marie Curie — Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911. First woman laureate, first double laureate, and for 32 years the only woman with a science Nobel. The 1903 committee initially omitted her; her husband Pierre Curie insisted her name be added.
- Irène Joliot-Curie — Chemistry 1935, for artificial radioactivity. The only mother-daughter pair of laureates in history; the family's five prizes get their own article.
- Gerty Cori — Medicine 1947, for the glucose cycle that bears her name. Universities had employed her for years only as her husband's poorly paid "associate."
The mid-century giants
- Dorothy Hodgkin — Chemistry 1964, for solving penicillin and vitamin B12 by X-ray crystallography; she later solved insulin after decades of work. Still the only British woman with a science Nobel.
- Rosalyn Yalow — Medicine 1977, co-inventor of radioimmunoassay, which can detect a billionth of a gram of hormone in blood. Told early that physics graduate school was no place for a woman, she kept the rejection letter.
- Barbara McClintock — Medicine 1983, for jumping genes — awarded unshared, 35 years after the discovery, once the field finally caught up with her.
- Rita Levi-Montalcini — Medicine 1986, for nerve growth factor, discovered in a laboratory she first assembled in her bedroom in Mussolini's Italy, where race laws barred her from the university.
"Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them."
— Rita Levi-Montalcini
The modern wave
- Ada Yonath — Chemistry 2009, first Israeli woman laureate, for the ribosome's atomic structure.
- Tu Youyou — Medicine 2015, first Chinese woman laureate, for artemisinin, a story told in our survey of China's greatest minds.
- Donna Strickland — Physics 2018, for chirped pulse amplification, the trick behind laser eye surgery — only the third woman ever in physics, 55 years after the second.
- Frances Arnold — Chemistry 2018, for directing the evolution of enzymes in a test tube.
- Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna — Chemistry 2020, for CRISPR gene editing: the first science Nobel ever won by two women together, for a tool now rewriting medicine.
The arithmetic of the door
The trend line is unmistakable: one woman laureate in the prize's first three decades; more women won science Nobels in the 2010s and 2020s than in the previous seventy years combined. The pipeline that Curie entered alone is finally crowded.
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Take the IQ test →But the missing names still sting — Lise Meitner, nominated 48 times for fission and never awarded, and Rosalind Franklin, dead four years before the DNA prize, lead our list of geniuses the Nobel missed.
Watch: Emmy Noether and The Fabric of Reality
The record still standing
More than a century on, Marie Curie's double remains untouched: no woman — and only four men — have matched two science Nobels. The first name on the list is still the highest bar.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many women have won science Nobel Prizes?
Fewer than thirty individual women across Physics, Chemistry and Medicine since 1901, out of well over six hundred laureates.
Who was the first woman to win a science Nobel?
Marie Curie, in Physics in 1903 — and she remained the only one for 32 years, until her daughter Irène won in 1935.
What was the first all-female science Nobel?
Chemistry 2020, shared by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for CRISPR gene editing.