This is atimeline of women in science, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. While the timeline primarily focuses on women involved withnatural sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, it also includes women from thesocial sciences (e.g.sociology,psychology) and theformal sciences (e.g. mathematics, computer science), as well as notablescience educators andmedical scientists. The chronological events listed in the timeline relate to both scientific achievements and gender equality within the sciences.
1900 BCE: Aganice, also known as Athyrta, was an Egyptian princess during theMiddle Kingdom (about 2000–1700 BCE) working on astronomy and natural philosophy.[1]
1200 BCE: The Mesopotamian perfume-makerTapputi-Belatekallim was referenced in the text of acuneiform tablet. She is often considered the world's first recorded chemist.[3]
1st century BCE: A woman known only asFang became the earliest recorded Chinese femalealchemist. She is credited with "the discovery of how to turn mercury into silver" – possibly the chemical process of boiling off mercury in order to extract pure silver residue from ores.[8]
c. 350–415 CE: Greek astronomer, mathematician and philosopherHypatia became renowned as a respected academic teacher, commentator on mathematics, and head of her own science academy.[8][10][11]
c. 975: Chinese alchemistKeng Hsien-Seng was employed by the Royal Court. She distilled perfumes, utilized an early form of theSoxhlet process to extract camphor into alcohol, and gained recognition for her skill in using mercury to extract silver from ores.[8][14]
fl. 1333:Margarita da Venosa, licensed Napolitan surgeon, who studied at the University of Salerno She was considered a noteworthy practitioner and counted Ladislaus, king of Naples, as a patient.
fl. 1333:Maria Incarnata, Italian surgeon, mentioned in Pope Sixtus IV edict regarding physicians and surgeons.[30]
1561: Italian alchemistIsabella Cortese published her popular bookThe Secrets of Lady Isabella Cortese. The work included recipes for medicines, distilled oils and cosmetics, and was the only book published by a female alchemist in the 16th century.[33]
1572: Italian botanistLoredana Marcello died from theplague – but not before developing several effectivepalliative formulas for plague sufferers, which were used by many physicians.[34][35]
1572: Danish scientistSophia Brahe (1556–1643) assisted her brotherTycho Brahe with his astronomical observations.[36]
1590: After her husband's death,Caterina Vitale took over his position as chief pharmacist to theOrder of St John, becoming the first female chemist and pharmacist inMalta.[37][38]
1636:Anna Maria van Schurman is the first woman ever to attend university lectures.[40] She had to sit behind a screen so that her male fellow students would not see her.
1642:Martine Bertereau, the first recorded femalemineralogist, was imprisoned in France on suspicion of witchcraft. Bertereau had published two written works on the science of mining andmetallurgy before being arrested.[8]
1650:Silesian astronomerMaria Cunitz publishedUrania Propitia, a work that both simplified and substantially improvedJohannes Kepler's mathematical methods for locating planets. The book was published in both Latinand German, an unconventional decision that made the scientific text more accessible for non-university educated readers.[41]
1656: French chemist and alchemistMarie Meurdrac published her bookLa Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames (Useful and Easy Chemistry, for the Benefit of Ladies).[42]
1667:Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne (1623 – 15 December 1673) was an English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright during the 17th century. She was the first woman to attend a meeting at theRoyal Society of London, in 1667, and she criticised and engaged with members and philosophersThomas Hobbes,René Descartes, andRobert Boyle.[43]
1668: After separating from her husband, French polymathMarguerite de la Sablière established a popularsalon in Paris. Scientists and scholars from different countries visited the salon regularly to discuss ideas and share knowledge, and Sablière studied physics, astronomy and natural history with her guests.[44]
1680: French astronomerJeanne Dumée published a summary of arguments supporting theCopernican theory of heliocentrism. She wrote "between the brain of a woman and that of a man there is no difference".[45]
1685: Frisian poet and archaeologistTitia Brongersma supervised the first excavation of adolmen inBorger, Netherlands. The excavation produced new evidence that the stone structures were graves constructed by prehistoric humans – rather than structures built bygiants, which had been the prior common belief.[46]
1690: German-Polish astronomerElisabetha Koopman Hevelius, widow ofJohannes Hevelius, whom she had assisted with his observations (and, probably, computations) for over twenty years, published in his nameProdromus Astronomiae, the largest and most accurate star catalog to that date.[47]
1693–1698: German astronomer and illustratorMaria Clara Eimmart created more than 350 detailed drawings of the moon phases.[48]
1699: German entomologistMaria Sibylla Merian, the first scientist to document the life cycle of insects for the public, embarked on a scientific expedition toSuriname, South America. She subsequently publishedMetamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, a groundbreaking illustrated work on South American plants, animals and insects.[49]
1702: Pioneering English entomologistEleanor Glanville captured a butterfly specimen inLincolnshire, which was subsequently named theGlanville fritillary in her honour. Her extensive butterfly collection impressed fellow entomologist William Vernon, who called Glanville's work "the noblest collection of butterflies, all English, which has sham'd us". Her butterfly specimens became part of early collections in theNatural History Museum.[50][51]
1702: German astronomerMaria Kirch became the first woman to discover a comet.[52]
c. 1702–1744: InMontreal, Canada, French botanistCatherine Jérémie collected plant specimens and studied their properties, sending the specimens and her detailed notes back to scientists in France.[53]
1732: At the age of 20, Italian physicistLaura Bassi became the first female member of theBologna Academy of Sciences. One month later, she publicly defended her academic theses and received a PhD. Bassi was awarded an honorary position as professor of physics at theUniversity of Bologna. She was the first female physics professor in the world.[54]
1738: French polymathÉmilie du Châtelet became the first woman to have a paper published by theParis Academy, following a contest on the nature of fire.[55]
1748: SwedishagronomistEva Ekeblad became the first female member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Two years earlier, she had developed a new process of using potatoes to make flour and alcohol, which subsequently lessened Sweden's reliance on wheat crops and decreased the risk of famine.[57]
1751: 19-year-old Italian physicistCristina Roccati received her PhD from the University of Bologna.[58]
1754:Dorothea Erxleben was the first female to be awarded a doctor in medicine in Germany (University of Halle, then Kingdom of Prussia). She practiced medicine from 1747 to 1762 inQuedlinburg.
1755: After the death of her husband, Italian anatomistAnna Morandi Manzolini took his place at theUniversity of Bologna, becoming a professor ofanatomy and establishing an internationally known laboratory for anatomical research.[60]
1760: American horticulturalistMartha Daniell Logan began corresponding with botanic specialist and collectorJohn Bartram, regularly exchanging seeds, plants and botanical knowledge with him.[62]
1762: French astronomerNicole-Reine Lepaute calculated the time and percentage of a solar eclipse that had been predicted to occur in two years time. She created a map to show the phases, and published a table of her calculations in the 1763 edition ofConnaissance des Temps.[61]
1766: French chemistGeneviève Thiroux d'Arconville published her study onputrefaction. The book presented her observations from more than 300 experiments over the span of five years, during which she attempted to discover factors necessary for the preservation of beef, eggs, and other foods. Her work was recommended forroyal privilege by fellow chemistPierre-Joseph Macquer.[63]
c. 1775: Herbalist/botanistJeanne Baret becomes the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
c. 1775: French chemist, scientific artist and translator,Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier began working with her husband chemistAntoine Lavoisier. She was instrumental in the 1789 publication of her husband’s groundbreaking Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which presented a unified view of chemistry as a field, as she drew diagrams of all the equipment used, and kept strict records that lended validity to the findings. She also translated and critiqued Richard Kirwan's 'Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids' which led to the discovery of oxygen gas.[64]
1782–1791: French chemist and mineralogistClaudine Picardet translated more than 800 pages of Swedish, German, English and Italian scientific papers into French, enabling French scientists to better discuss and utilize international research in chemistry, mineralogy and astronomy.[65]
c. 1787–1797: Self-taught Chinese astronomerWang Zhenyi published at least twelve books and multiple articles on astronomy and mathematics. Using a lamp, a mirror and a table, she once created a famous scientific exhibit designed to accurately simulate a lunar eclipse.[66][67]
1786–1797: German astronomerCaroline Herschel discovered eight new comets,[68] along with numerous other discoveries.
1789: French astronomerLouise du Pierry, the first Parisian woman to become an astronomy professor, taught the first astronomy courses specifically open to female students.[69]
c. 1796–1820: During the reign of theJiaqing Emperor, astronomerHuang Lü became the first Chinese woman to work with optics and photographic images. She developed a telescope that could take simple photographic images using photosensitive paper.[66]
1797: English science writer and schoolmistressMargaret Bryan publishedA Compendious System of Astronomy, including an engraving of herself and her two daughters. She dedicated the book to her students.[71]
1809:Sabina Baldoncelli earned her university degree in pharmacy but was allowed to work only in the Italian orphanage where she resided.[73]
1815: English archaeologistLady Hester Stanhope used a medieval Italian manuscript to locate a promising archaeological site inAshkelon, becoming the first archaeologist to begin an excavation in thePalestinian region. It was one of the earliest examples of the use of textual sources in field archaeology.[74]
1830–1837: Belgian botanistMarie-Anne Libert published her four-volumePlantae cryptogamicae des Ardennes, a collection of 400 species of mosses, ferns, lichen, algae and fungi from theArdennes region. Her contributions to systemiccryptogamic studies were formally recognized by Prussian kingFriedrich Wilhelm III, and Libert received a gold medal of merit.[77]
1833: EnglishphycologistsAmelia Griffiths andMary Wyatt published two books on local British seaweeds. Griffiths had an internationally respected reputation as a skilled seaweed collector and scholar, and Swedish botanistCarl Agardh had earlier named the seaweed genusGriffithsia in her honour.[79]
1833:Orra White Hitchcock (March 8, 1796 – May 26, 1863) was one of America's earliest women botanical and scientific illustrators and artists, best known for illustrating the scientific works of her husband, geologistEdward Hitchcock (1793–1864), but also notable for her own artistic and scientific work. The most well known appear in her husband's seminal works, the 1833Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts and its successor, the 1841Final Report produced when he was State Geologist. For the 1833 edition,Pendleton's Lithography (Boston)lithographed nine of Hitchcock'sConnecticut River Valley drawings and printed them as plates for the work. In 1841,B. W. Thayer and Co., Lithographers (Boston) printed revised lithographs and an additional plate. The hand-colored plate "Autumnal Scenery. View in Amherst" is Hitchcock's most frequently seen work.[80]
1836: Early English geologist andpaleontologistEtheldred Benett, known for her extensive collection of several thousand fossils, was appointed a member of the Imperial Natural History Society of Moscow. The society – which only admitted men at the time – initially mistook Benett for a man due to her reputation as a scientist and her unusual first name, addressing her diploma of admission to "Dominum" (Master) Benett.[83][84]
1843: During a nine-month period in 1842–43, English mathematicianAda Lovelace translatedLuigi Menabrea's article onCharles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes.[86] Her notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason.[87][88] The engine was never completed, so her program was never tested.[89]
1843: British botanist and pioneering photographerAnna Atkins self-published her bookPhotographs of British Algae, illustrating the work withcyanotypes. Her book was the first book on any subject to be illustrated by photographs.[90]
1848–1849: English scientistMary Anne Whitby, a pioneer in westernsilkworm cultivation, collaborated with Charles Darwin in researching the hereditary qualities of silkworms.[93][94]
1854:Mary Horner Lyell was aconchologist andgeologist. She is most well known for her scientific work in 1854, where she studied her collection of land snails from theCanary Islands. She was married to the notable British geologistCharles Lyell and assisted him in his scientific work. It is believed by historians that she likely made major contributions to her husband's work.[96]
1854–1855:Florence Nightingale organized care for wounded soldiers during theCrimean War. She was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Her pie charts clearly showed that most deaths resulted from disease rather than battle wounds or "other causes," which led the general public to demand improved sanitation at field hospitals.[97]
1855: Working with her father, Welsh astronomer and photographerThereza Dillwyn Llewelyn produced some of the earliest photographs of the moon.[98]
1862: Belgian botanistMarie-Anne Libert became the first woman to join the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium. She was named an honorary member.[77]
1863: German naturalistAmalie Dietrich arrived in Australia to collect plant, animal and anthropological specimens for the GermanGodeffroy Museum. She remained in Australia for the next decade, discovering a number of new plant and animal species in the process, but also became notorious in later years for her removal ofAboriginal skeletons – and the possible incitement of violence against Aboriginal people – for anthropological research purposes.[100][101]
1869/1870: American beekeeperEllen Smith Tupper became the first female editor of an entomological journal.[103]
1870:Katharine Murray Lyell was a British botanist, author of an early book on the worldwide distribution of ferns, and editor of volumes of the correspondence of several of the era's notable scientists.[104]
1874:Julia Lermontova became the first Russian woman to receive a PhD in chemistry.[106]
1875: Hungarian archaeologistZsófia Torma excavated the site of Turdaș-Luncă inHunedoara County, today inRomania. The site, which uncovered valuable prehistoric artifacts, became one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Europe.[107]
1876–1878: American naturalistMary Treat studiedinsectivorous plants in Florida. Her contributions to the scientific understanding of how these plants caught and digested prey were acknowledged byCharles Darwin andAsa Gray.[108]
1880: Self-taught German chemistAgnes Pockels began investigatingsurface tension, becoming a pioneering figure in the field ofsurface science. The measurement equipment she developed provided the basic foundation for modern quantitative analyses of surface films.[111]
1888: American chemistJosephine Silone Yates was appointed head of the Department of Natural Sciences at Lincoln Institute (laterLincoln University), becoming the first black woman to head a college science department.[119][120]
1890: Austrian-born chemistIda Freund became the first woman to work as a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She was promoted to full lecturer atNewnham College, Cambridge.[122]
1892: American psychologistChristine Ladd-Franklin presented her evolutionary theory on the development ofcolour vision to the International Congress of Psychology. Her theory was the first to emphasize colour vision as an evolutionary trait.[citation needed]
1897: American cytologists and zoologistsKatharine Foot andElla Church Strobell started working as research partners. Together, they pioneered the practice of photographing microscopic research samples and invented a new technique for creating thin material samples in colder temperatures.[138]
1897: American physicistIsabelle Stone became the first woman to receive a PhD in physics in the United States. She wrote her dissertation "On the Electrical Resistance of Thin Films" at theUniversity of Chicago.[139][140]
1900: American botanistAnna Murray Vail became the first librarian of theNew 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.[145]
1900: PhysicistsMarie Skłodowska–Curie andIsabelle Stone attended the first International Congress of Physics inParis, France. They were the only two women out of 836 participants.[140]
1901: American Florence Bascom became the first female geologist to present a paper before the Geological Survey of Washington.[146]
1901: American astronomerAnnie Jump Cannon published her first catalog of stellar spectra, whichclassified stars by temperature. This method was universally and permanently adopted by other astronomers.[148]
1903:Grace Coleridge Frankland née Toynbee was an English microbiologist. Her most notable work wasBacteria in Daily Life. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society.[149]
1904: American geographer, geologist and educatorZonia 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.[153]
1904:Marie Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author,palaeobotanist and campaigner forwomen's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and coal classification. She held the post of Lecturer in Palaeobotany at theUniversity of Manchester from 1904 to 1910; in this capacity she became the first female academic of that university.[155] In 1909 she was elected to theLinnean Society of London. She was 26 at the time of her election to Fellowship (the youngest woman admitted at that time).
1906: Following theSan Francisco earthquake, American botanist and curatorAlice Eastwood rescued almost 1500 rare plant specimens from the burningCalifornia 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.[159]
1906: Russian chemistIrma 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 theGoldberg reaction and the Jourdan-Ullman-Goldberg reaction.[160]
1906: After her death, EnglishlepidopteristEmma Hutchinson's collection of 20,000 butterflies and moths was donated to theLondon 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 thecomma butterfly was namedhutchinsoni.[162]
1909: Danish physicistKirstine 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.[141]
1911: Polish-born physicist and chemistMarie Curie became the first woman to receive theNobel Prize in Chemistry, which she received "[for] the discovery of the elementsradium andpolonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".[166][167][168] 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.
1912: American astronomerHenrietta Swan Leavitt studied the bright-dim cycle periods of Cepheid stars, then found a way to calculate the distance from such stars to Earth.[166]
1912: Canadian botanist and geneticistCarrie Derick was appointed a professor of morphological botany atMcGill University. She was the first woman to become a full professor in any department at a Canadian university.[170]
1913:Regina Fleszarowa became the first Polish woman to receive a PhD in natural sciences.[171]
1913:Izabela Textorisová, the first Slovakian female botanist, published "Flora Data from the County of Turiec" in the journalBotanikai Közlemények. Her work uncovered more than 100 previously unknown species of plants from theTuriec area.[172]
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 theOrder of the British Empire for her wartime contributions.[174]
1914-1918: DameHelen Gwynne-Vaughan,GBE (née Fraser) was a prominent Englishbotanist andmycologist. For her wartime service she was the first woman to be awarded a militaryDBE in January 1918. She served as Commandant of theWomen's Royal Air Force (WRAF) from September 1918 until December 1919.[175]
1914: British-born mycologistEthel Doidge became the first woman in South Africa to receive a doctorate in any subject, receiving herdoctorate of science degree from the University of the Good Hope. She wrote her thesis on "A bacterial disease of mango".[176]
1916:Chika Kuroda became the first Japanese woman to earn a bachelor of science degree, studying chemistry at theTohoku Imperial University. After graduation, she was subsequently appointed an assistant professor at the university.[178]
1917: AmericanzoologistMary J. Rathbun received her PhD from theGeorge 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 ofcrustacean, and developed a system for crustacean-related records at theSmithsonian Museum.[179]
1919: Dutch biologist and geneticistJantina Tammes became the university professor in theNetherlands. She was appointed anextraordinary professor ofvariability and heredity at theUniversity 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.[180]
1920:Louisa Bolus was elected a Fellow of theRoyal 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.[184]
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.[185]
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 theurinary tract.[186]
1925: Mexican-American botanistYnes Mexia embarked on her first botanical expedition into Mexico, collecting over 1500 plant specimens. Over the course of the next thirteen years, Mexia collected more than 145,000 specimens from Mexico, Alaska, and multiple South American countries. She discovered 500 new species.[187]
1925: British-American astronomer and astrophysicistCecilia Payne-Gaposchkin established thathydrogen is the most common element in stars, and thus the most abundant element in the universe.[189]
1932:Michiyo Tsujimura became the first Japanese woman to earn adoctorate in agriculture. She studied at the Tokyo Imperial University, and her doctoral thesis was entitled "On the Chemical Components of Green Tea".[201]
1933: American bacteriologistRuth Ella Moore became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the natural sciences, completing her doctorate in bacteriology atOhio State University.[204]
1933: Egyptian medical doctorTawhida Abdel-Rahman becomes the first female doctor employed by the Egyptian Government Health Ministry.[205]
1938: BotanistsElzada U Clover andLois 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[222]
1939: Austrian-Swedish physicistLise Meitner, along withOtto Hahn, led the small group of scientists who first discoverednuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extraneutron; the results were published in early 1939.[223][224]
1940: TurkishArchaeologist,Sumerologist,Assyriologist, and writerMuazzez 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 comprisingIstanbul Archaeology Museums, as a resident specialist in the field ofcuneiformtablets, 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 aMiddle Eastern languages learning center attended by ancient history researchers from every part of the world.[226]
1941: American scientistRuth Smith Lloyd became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in anatomy.[227]
1942: Native American aerospace engineerMary Golda Ross became employed atLockheed Aircraft Corporation, where she provided troubleshooting for military aircraft. She went on to work forNASA, developing operational requirements, flight plans, and a Planetary Flight Handbook for spacecraft missions such as theApollo program.[230]
1943: British geologistEileen Guppy was promoted to the rank of assistant geologist, therefore becoming the first female geology graduate appointed to the scientific staff of theBritish Geological Survey.[231]
1943: American geologist and crystallographerElizabeth A. Wood became the first female to be hired as a Member of the Technical Staff (MTS) at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ.[232]
1947: American biochemistMarie 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" atColumbia University.[239]
1947:Berta Karlik, an Austrian physicist, was awarded theHaitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for her discovery of astatine.[240]
1948: American limnologistRuth Patrick of theAcademy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia led a multidisciplinary team of scientists on an extensive pollution survey of the Conestoga River watershed in Pennsylvania.[242] Patrick would become a leading authority on the ecological effects of river pollution, receiving the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1975.[243]
1949: BotanistValida Tutayug [az] 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.[244]
1950s: Chinese-American medical scientistTsai-Fan Yu co-founded a clinic atMount Sinai Medical Center for the study and treatment ofgout. Working withAlexander B. Gutman, Yu established that levels ofuric acid were a factor in the pain experienced by gout patients, and subsequently developed multiple effective drugs for the treatment of gout.[249]
1952: American computer scientistGrace Hopper completed what is considered to be the first compiler, a program that allows a computer user to use a human-readablehigh-level programming language instead of machine code. It was known as the A-0 compiler.[260]
1955: Japanese geochemistKatsuko Saruhashi published her research on measuringcarbonic acid levels in seawater. The paper included "Saruhashi's Table", a tool of measurement she had developed that focused on using water temperature, pH level, and chlorinity to determine carbonic acid levels. Her work contributed to global understanding of climate change, and Saruhashi's Table was used by oceanographers for the next 30 years.[274]
1955–1956: Soviet marine biologistMaria Klenova became the first female scientist to work in the Antarctic, conducting research and assisting in the establishment of theMirny Antarctic station.[275]
1956: Canadian zoologist and feministAnne Innis Dagg began pioneering behavioural research on wild giraffes in South Africa in Kruger National Park. She researched and published on feminism and anti-nepotism laws at academic institutions in North America.
1956: Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu conducted anuclear physics experiment in collaboration with the Low Temperature Group of the USNational Bureau of Standards. It was an important foundation for theStandard Model inparticle physics and brought the first answer to the question of the universe's existence by virtue ofmatter's predominance over antimatter.[276] The experiment, becoming known as theWu experiment, showed that parity could be violated in weak interaction.[277] The Nobel Prize was given only to her male colleagues soon after the headlines of the discovery were released.
1959: Chinese astronomerYe Shuhua led the development of the Joint Chinese Universal Time System, which became the Chinese national standard for measuringuniversal time.[281]
1960: BritishprimatologistJane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in Tanzania; her study of them continued for over 50 years. Her observations challenged previous ideas that only humans made tools and that chimpanzees had a basically vegetarian diet.[284][285]
1964: American mathematicianIrene Stegun completed the work which led to the publication ofHandbook of Mathematical Functions, a widely used and widely cited reference work in applied mathematics.
1965: SisterMary Kenneth Keller became the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. in computer science.[298] Her thesis was titled "Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns".[299]
1967: South African radiobiologistTikvah Alper discovered thatscrapie, an infectious brain disease affecting sheep, did not spread via DNA or RNA like a viral or bacterial disease. The discovery enabled scientists to better understand diseases caused byprions.[303][304]
1967:Yvonne Brill, a Canadian-American rocket and jet propulsion engineer, invented thehydrazineresistojet propulsion system.
1970: Polish geologistFranciszka Szymakowska became widely known because of her unique and detailed geological drawings that are still used today.[309]
1973: American physicistAnna Coble became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in biophysics, completing her dissertation atUniversity of Illinois.[310]
1976: Filipino-American microbiologistRoseli Ocampo-Friedmann traveled to theAntarctic withImre Friedmann and discovered micro-organisms living within the porous rock of the Ross Desert. These organisms –cryptoendoliths – were observed surviving extremely low temperatures and humidity, assisting scientific research into the possibility of life onMars.[316]
1977: Friederike VictoriaJoy Adamson (née Gessner, 20 January 1910 – 3 January 1980) was a naturalist, artist and author. Her book, Born Free, an international bestseller, describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. It was made into anAcademy Award-winningmovie of the same name. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.[320]
1977: Argentine-Canadian scientistVeronica Dahl became the first graduate at Université d'Aix-Marseille II (and one of the first women in the world) to earn a PhD inartificial intelligence.[322]
1977: Canadian-AmericanElizabeth Stern published her research on the link betweenbirth control pills – which contained high levels ofestrogen at the time – and the increased risk ofcervical cancer development in women. Her data helped pressure the pharmaceutical industry into providing safer contraceptive pills with lower hormone doses.[323]
1980: Nigerian geophysicistDeborah Ajakaiye became the first woman in any West African country to be appointed a full professor of physics.[329][330] Over the course of her scientific career, she became the first female Fellow elected to theNigerian Academy of Science, and the first female dean of science in Nigeria.[331]
1985: After identifyingHIV as the cause ofAIDS, Chinese-American virologistFlossie Wong-Staal became the first scientist to clone and genetically map the HIV virus, enabling the development of the first HIV blood screening tests.[344]
1988: American scientist and inventorPatricia Bath (born 1942) became the first African-American to patent a medical device, namely the Laserphaco Probe for improving the use of lasers to remove cataracts.[347]
1992:Mae Carol Jemison is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Jemison joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.[351]
1992:Edith M. Flanigen became the first woman awarded thePerkin Medal (widely considered the highest honor in American industrial chemistry) for her outstanding achievements in applied chemistry.[352][353] The medal especially recognized her syntheses of aluminophosphate and silicoaluminophosphatemolecular sieves as new classes of materials.[353]
1995: British geomorphologistMarjorie Sweeting published the first comprehensive Western account of China'skarst, entitledKarst in China: its Geomorphology and Environment.[355][356]
1996: American planetary scientistMargaret G. Kivelson led a team that discovered the first subsurface, saltwater ocean on an alien world, on the Jovian moonEuropa.[360][361]
1997: Lithuanian-Canadian primatologistBirutė Galdikas received theTyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for her research and rehabilitation work with orangutans. Her work with orangutans, eventually spanning over 30 years, was later recognized in 2014 as one of the longest continuous scientific studies of wild animals in history.[362]
2000: Venezuelan astrophysicistKathy Vivas presented her discovery of approximately 100 "new and very distant"RR Lyrae stars, providing insight into the structure and history of the Milky Way galaxy.[368]
2003: American geophysicistClaudia Alexander oversaw the final stages ofProject Galileo, a space exploration mission that ended at the planet Jupiter.[369]
2006: Chinese-American biochemistYizhi Jane Tao led a team of researchers to become the first to map the atomic structure ofInfluenza A, contributing toantiviral research.[372][373]
2006:Merieme Chadid became the first Moroccan person and the first female astronomer to travel to Antarctica, leading an international team of scientists in the installation of a majorobservatory in the South Pole.[375]
2006: American computer scientistFrances E. Allen won theTuring Award for "pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution". She was the first woman to win the award.[376]
2007: Using satellite imagery, Egyptian geomorphologistEman Ghoneim discovered traces of an 11,000-year-old mega lake in theSahara Desert. The discovery shed light on the origins of the largest moderngroundwater reservoir in the world.[378]
2008: American-born AustralianPenny Sackett became Australia's first female Chief Scientist.[381]
2008: American computer scientistBarbara Liskov won theTuring Award for "contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing".[382]
2009: Chinese geneticistZeng Fanyi and her research team published their experiment results proving thatinduced pluripotent stem cells can be used to generate whole mammalian bodies – in this case, live mice.[385]
2010:Marcia McNutt became the first female director of the United States Geological Survey.[386]
2011: Kazakhstani neuroscience student and computer hackerAlexandra Elbakyan launchedSci-Hub, a website that provides users with pirated copies of scholarly scientific papers. Within five years, Sci-Hub grew to contain 60 million papers and recorded over 42 million annual downloads by users. Elbakyan was finally sued by major academic publishing companyElsevier, and Sci-Hub was subsequently taken down, but it reappeared under different domain names.[387]
2011: Taiwanese-American astrophysicistChung-Pei Ma led a team of scientists in discovering two of the largestblack holes ever observed.[388]
2015:Asha de Vos became the first Sri Lankan person to receive a PhD in marine mammal research, completing her thesis on "Factors influencing blue whale aggregations off southern Sri Lanka" at theUniversity of Western Australia.[404][405]
2018: British astrophysicistsHiranya Peiris andJoanna Dunkley and Italian cosmologistLicia Verde were among 27 scientists awarded theBreakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their contributions to "detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies".[407]
2018: British astrophysicistJocelyn Bell Burnell received the specialBreakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her scientific achievements and "inspiring leadership", worth $3 million. She donated the entirety of the prize money towards the creation of scholarships to assist women, underrepresented minorities and refugees who are pursuing the study of physics.[408]
2019: Imaging scientistKatie Bouman developed an algorithm that made the first visualization of a black hole possible using theEvent Horizon Telescope. She was part of the team of over 200 people who implemented the project.[415][416][417][418]
2023: Australian geomicrobiologistJillian Banfield became the first female recipient of the vanLeeuwenhoek Medal, which she received for her studies of complex microbial communities and their interaction with the environment.[427]
2025: South African-born physicist and space scientistMichele Dougherty is appointedAstronomer Royal for the United Kingdom, becoming the first woman appointed to the role in its 350-year history.[428]
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