21 Women Who Made Scientific History

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson paved the way for women in medicine in Great Britain. She was the first female doctor in England and overcame significant barriers to achieve professional success at a time when women were not allowed to practice medicine.

She opened up a school of medicine for women and primarily appointed women to leadership positions on staff. She eventually became the first woman dean of a medical school and the first female mayor in England.

A pioneering Black chemist, Alice Ball, revolutionized the treatment for leprosy in the early 20th century. After earning graduate degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Hawaii, Ball became one of the first female chemistry professors in the U.S.

In the laboratory, Ball researched treatments for leprosy. In her early 20s, she developed the first injectable leprosy treatment made from the oil of the chaulmoogra tree. The “Ball Method” was eventually used to treat thousands of leprosy patients until the development of sulfone drugs decades later.

Ball died at just 24 years old after being exposed to chlorine gas in a lab accident. After her death, another professor claimed Ball’s work as his own, denying her credit. Today, Ball stands as a trailblazing woman in chemistry.

Born at an archaeological dig site in New York where her father performed excavations, Bertha Parker Pallan Cody (born Bertha Yewas Parker) is widely considered one of the first female Native American archaeologists.

After moving to Nevada as a young adult, Cody demonstrated a keen interest in scientific research when she assisted her uncle in archaeological excavations. Over the years, Cody published numerous research articles and even made a revolutionary discovery of a Pueblo site in 1929, which she named “Scorpion Hill.”

Cody later described the dig in a 1933 article: “The fragments of charcoal indicated that the room had been burned and that its roof had consisted of large beams covered with tules and arrow cane. I uncovered about half the room that day.”

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Cody was a trustee for the Southwest Museum. She also co-hosted a TV show on Native American lore with her famous actor-husband, Iron Eyes Cody.

Marie Curie remains the only scientist to win Nobel Prizes in two scientific fields. After studying at the Sorbonne, Curie became a professor of physics and opened a laboratory to study radiation.

After the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, Curie isolated the new elements polonium and radium for the first time and developed a method to isolate radium for observation. In 1903, Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work on spontaneous radiation. Her work on radioactivity earned her a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, in 1911.

Curie’s work on X-rays and uranium helped establish the field of atomic physics. After years of working with radioactive materials, Curie died in 1934 from radiation exposure.

Professors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier discovered a new gene technology that allows doctors to perform microsurgery on human, plant, and animal DNA. CRISPR-Cas9 technology allows scientists to add, remove, disable, and correct genes and genetic disorders.

Doudna is a 2016 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for North America, a structural biologist, and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Charpentier is a 2016 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for Europe, microbiologist and geneticist, Honorary Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, and founder and Scientific and Managing Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin.

The duo won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discoveries that have “set the scientific world on fire.”

The race to discover the structure of DNA consumed scientists in the 1950s, but it was the work of one woman, Rosalind Franklin, that proved instrumental in uncovering the double helix.

Franklin held a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University and worked on X-ray crystallography. After 100 hours of X-ray exposure, she successfully photographed the structure of DNA on a machine she refined.

Her colleague, Maurice Wilkins, gave the photograph to James Watson and Francis Crick without Franklin’s permission. When Watson saw the picture, he said, “My jaw fell open and my pulse began to race.”

Watson and Crick used Franklin’s work to publish a revolutionary 1953 article in Nature, ultimately winning them the Nobel Prize, an honor they shared with Wilkins. Unfortunately, Franklin passed away at the age of 37 without receiving recognition for her contributions to science.

The astronomer Caroline Herschel holds several records for “the first”: She was the first woman to discover a comet and the first woman to receive a salary for her scientific work. Herschel was also the first woman granted honorary membership in the Royal Society before the prestigious society admitted women.

In the 1780s, Herschel worked with her brother, William, to catalog the night sky. The siblings recorded 2,500 nebulae and star clusters, with Herschel alone discovering 14 nebulae and eight comets. In 1787, King George III offered Herschel a salary for her astronomical research. She meticulously swept the skies to chart over 500 stars that the previous star catalog did not list.

The tombstone of Herschel, who died in 1848 at the age of 97, contains an inscription in her own words: “The eyes of her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens.”

Mae Jemison is a doctor, engineer, and former NASA astronaut. In 1992, she became the first Black woman to travel into space. Jemison excels in many scientific fields, has authored several books, and even appeared on an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame. Currently, she leads the 100 Year Starship Project through the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This project is dedicated to ensuring that human travel to another star is possible in the next 100 years.

Born in West Virginia, Katherine Johnson is best known for her work as a “computer” at NASA. Her mathematical calculations helped the U.S. send people into orbit around Earth and, later, to the moon.

In her youth, Johnson had a penchant for numbers and counting. She learned quickly, too, and started high school at just 10 years old and college at 15.

Over a decade after earning her degree in mathematics, Johnson learned that NASA was hiring Black “computers”—highly skilled mathematicians who could perform and solve complex math problems. In the 1960s, NASA used Johnson’s calculations to successfully send astronauts into orbit.

Upon her death in 2020, NASA administrator James Bridenstine said, “She was an American hero, and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.”

Known as the mother of modern chemistry, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier revolutionized the field with her husband, Antoine. Though Antoine received much of the credit in the 18th century, Lavoisier played a pivotal role in chemical experiments and publications.

She rigorously documented her and her husband’s scientific experiments, creating detailed illustrations so others could replicate the results. When Antoine debated the nature of oxygen with English chemist Joseph Priestley, Lavoisier translated Priestley’s writings for her husband.

During the Reign of Terror, revolutionary leaders arrested Antoine for serving in a tax agency before the French Revolution. Lavoisier defended her husband and called on an international community of scientists to support him but to no avail. On May 8, 1794, she watched her husband go to the guillotine.

Later, Lavoisier published a volume on her and her husband’s research.

In 1895, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who became deaf following an illness in college, volunteered to work at the Harvard College Observatory. It took seven years for director Charles Pickering to offer Leavitt a salary — 30 cents an hour — and the Radcliffe College graduate eventually became the head of the observatory’s photographic photometry department.

Leavitt made breakthrough discoveries in astronomy, including the identification of over 2,400 variable stars. Her work doubled the contemporary knowledge of these stars and helped Leavitt find the link between a star’s brightness and its distance from Earth. Based on her discovery, Edwin Hubble determined that the universe was expanding.

One colleague praised Leavitt for “possessing the best mind at the Observatory.” However, because of her gender, Leavitt was only allowed to work on assigned projects. Today, the Leavitt crater on the moon recognizes the pioneer’s groundbreaking contributions.

Ada Lovelace is regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. In the 1880s, she helped develop the idea for a computing machine and — long before computers were even invented — invented an algorithm for a computer. To honor her contributions, the U.S. Department of Defense named a new computer language “Ada” in the 1990s.

In the mid-20th century, geneticists agreed that genes were fixed in place and did not move. Barbara McClintock, however, upended that theory through her research on maize.

In the late 1920s, McClintock researched genetic transposition, a groundbreaking concept. Then, in the 1940s and ’50s, she built upon her work to prove that genes could turn on or off physical characteristics. McClintock faced skepticism for challenging current ideas of molecular biology, which pushed her to refrain from publishing some of her work.

In 1983, McClintock won the Nobel Prize for her work on the ability of genes to move positions on a chromosome. “Over the many years, I truly enjoyed not being required to defend my interpretations,” McClintock said. “I never felt the need nor the desire to defend my views.”

In the 1930s, Lise Meitner helped discover nuclear fission. After earning a doctorate from the University of Vienna, Meitner became the first physics professor at the University of Berlin. As Adolf Hitler rose to power, she relocated to Sweden, where she worked with Otto Hahn and Otto Frisch on nuclear fission.

When Hahn found the evidence for nuclear fission, Meitner and Frisch correctly described the process. Hahn went on to win the Nobel Prize for his work without acknowledging Meitner’s contribution. Meitner never won the Nobel Prize herself, though she was nominated for prizes in chemistry and physics 48 times between 1924 and 1965.

Meitner recognized the implications of weaponizing fission but refused to engage in that research. She declined when asked to contribute to the Manhattan Project, stating, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”

Maria Sibylla Merian transformed the fields of botany and zoology. In the 1670s, she collected and observed living moths, butterflies, and other insects to create an illustrated catalog of European insects. By working from life rather than with preserved specimens, Merian added vibrancy to understanding zoology.

After publishing several illustrated books, Merian traveled to South America with her daughter to continue her research. In the Dutch colony of Suriname, Merian studied indigenous animals and plants in their natural habitats. By traveling without a male companion and conducting scientific research from life, Merian challenged the social conventions of her time.

Once she returned to the Netherlands, Merian published her naturalist study of Suriname, helping to shape modern zoology and botany.

Sally Ride was instrumental in creating career and educational opportunities for women and girls in science and mathematics. As an astronaut, she became the first American woman in space in 1983. On NASA’s second and third Space Shuttle missions, her job was to work the robotic arm, which she used to put satellites into space.

After she stopped working for NASA, she founded NASA’s EarthKam Project, which provided students the opportunity to take pictures of the Earth and then study them. In 2003, she was added to the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Susan Solomon became the first scientist to discover a “hole” in the Ozone layer in 1986. Her discovery confirmed a 1973 theory that chlorofluorocarbons could damage the ozone layer in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Solomon and her colleagues visited Antarctica in 1983 and discovered that the layer had dropped about 35% from the 1960s.

In 1994, she had a glacier named after her, and five years later, the U.S. Government awarded her the 1999 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific award. She has also won the international Blue Planet Prize and was a part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won a Nobel Peace Prize.

She is currently the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Valentina Tereshkova is an engineer, a member of the Russian State Duma, and a former Soviet cosmonaut. On June 13, 1963, she became the first woman to travel into space. She orbited the Earth 48 times in just three days. She later served in the Communist Party and represented the USSR at numerous international events. Tereshkova remains the only woman who has been on a solo space mission.

In 1953, geologist Marie Tharp created a detailed map of the Atlantic Ocean’s floor and discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Earth’s largest physical feature. Tharp’s map proved the controversial theory of plate tectonics and established seafloor spreading.

At the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Tharp’s colleague, Bruce Heezen, groaned at her discoveries and dismissed them as “girl talk.” Her meticulous work ultimately won over Heezen and the scientific community.

In 1999, Tharp fondly remembered her time at the observatory: “The whole world was spread out before me. I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities. … It was a once-in-a-lifetime — a once-in-the-history-of-the-world — opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s.”

A pioneer in physics, Chien-Shiung Wu was the first person to prove that the principle of parity conservation does not apply during beta decay.

Born and raised in a small town north of Shanghai, Wu was fortunate enough to receive a formal education, which was uncommon for girls then. In 1934, Wu graduated from the National Central University in Nanking (now called Nanjing University) with a degree in physics. At the urging of a female mentor, she continued her studies in the U.S. and later earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wu remained in the U.S. to teach university-level physics courses at Smith College and Princeton University, where she was the first woman professor in the physics department. She also joined the Manhattan Project, through which she helped advance knowledge of atomic science.