Timeline of women in science

This is a timeline of women in science.

Ancient history

The Tapputi Belatekallim tablet

• c. 2700 BCE: In Ancient Egypt, Merit-Ptah practised medicine in the pharaoh's court.^[1]
• 1200 BCE: The Mesopotamian perfume-maker Tapputi-Belatekallim was referenced in the text of a cuneiform tablet. She is considered the world's first recorded chemist.^[2]
• c.150 BCE: Aglaonice became the first female astronomer to be recorded in Ancient Greece.^[3][4]
• 1st century BCE: A woman known only as Fang became the earliest recorded Chinese woman alchemist. 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.^[5]
• 1st century CE: Mary the Jewess was among the world's first alchemists.^[6]
• c. 355 – 415 CE: Greek astronomer, mathematician and philosopher Hypatia became renowned as a respected teacher and commentator on the sciences.^[7]

Middle Ages

• c. 975 CE: Chinese alchemist Keng Hsien-Seng was employed by the Royal Court. She distilled perfumes, utilized an early form of the Soxhlet process to extract camphor into alcohol, and gained recognition for her skill in using mercury to extract silver from ores.^[5][8]
• 10th century: Astronomer Mariam al-Asturlabi developed and manufactured astrolabes for the court of Sayf al-Dawla in Aleppo.^[9]
• early 12th century: Dobrodeia of Kiev (died 1131), a Rus' princess, was the first woman to write a treatise on medicine.^[10]
• early 12th century: the Italian medical practitioner Trota of Salerno compiled medical works on women's ailments and skin diseases.^[11]
• 12th century: Adelle of the Saracens taught at the Salerno School of Medicine.^[12]
• 12th century: Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a founder of scientific natural history in Germany.^[13]
• 1159: the Alsacian nun Herrad of Landsberg (1130–1195) compiled the scientific compendium Hortus deliciarum.^[14]
• 1220s: Zulema the Astrologist was a Muslim astronomer in Medina Mayurqa.^[15]
• early 14th century: Adelmota of Carrara was a physician in Padua, Italy.^[16]

16th century

Danish scientist Sophia Brahe

• 1561: Italian alchemist Isabella Cortese published her popular book The 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.^[17]
• 1572: Italian botanist Loredana Marcello died from the plague – but not before developing several effective palliative formulas for plague sufferers, which were used by many physicians.^[18][19]
• 1572: Danish scientist Sophia Brahe (1556–1643) assisted her brother Tycho Brahe with his astronomical observations.^[20]
• 1590: After her husband's death, Caterina Vitale took over his position as chief pharmacist to the Order of St John, becoming the first woman chemist and pharmacist in Malta.^[21][22]

17th century

German entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian

• 1609: French midwife Louyse Bourgeois became the first woman to write a book on childbirth practices.^[23]
• 1642: Martine Bertereau, the first recorded woman mineralogist, was imprisoned in France on suspicion of witchcraft. Bertereau had published two written works on the science of mining and metallurgy before being arrested.^[5]
• 1650: Silesian astronomer Maria Cunitz published Urania Propitia, a work that both simplified and substantially improved Johannes Kepler's mathematical methods for locating planets. The book was published in both Latin and German, an unconventional decision that made the scientific text more accessible for non-university educated readers.^[24]
• 1656: French chemist and alchemist Marie Meurdrac published her book La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames (Useful and Easy Chemistry, for the Benefit of Ladies).^[25]
• 1668: After separating from her husband, French polymath Marguerite de la Sablière established a popular salon 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.^[26]
• 1680: French astronomer Jeanne Dumée published a summary of arguments supporting the Copernican theory of heliocentrism. She wrote "between the brain of a woman and that of a man there is no difference".^[27]
• 1685: Frisian poet and archaeologist Titia Brongersma supervised the first excavation of a dolemen in Borger, Netherlands. The excavation produced new evidence that the stone structures were graves constructed by prehistoric humans – rather than structures built by giants, which had been the prior common belief.^[28]
• 1693 – 1698: German astronomer and illustrator Maria Clara Eimmart created more than 350 detailed drawings of the moon phases.^[29]
• 1699: German entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian, the first scientist to document the life cycle of insects for the public, embarked on a scientific expedition to Suriname, South America. She subsequently published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, a groundbreaking illustrated work on South American plants, animals and insects.^[30]

18th century

Italian physicist Laura Bassi

French polymath Émilie du Châtelet

Swedish agronomist Eva Ekeblad

• 1702: Pioneering English entomologist Eleanor Glanville captured a butterfly specimen in Lincolnshire which was subsequently named the Glanville 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 the Natural History Museum.^[31][32]
• 1702: German astronomer Maria Kirch became the first woman to discover a comet.^[33]
• c. 1702 – 1744: In Montreal, Canada, French botanist Catherine Jérémie collected plant specimens and studied their properties, sending the specimens and her detailed notes back to scientists in France.^[34]
• 1732: At the age of 20, Italian physicist Laura Bassi became the first female member of the Bologna 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 the University of Bologna. She was the first female physics professor in the world.^[35]
• 1738: French polymath Émilie du Châtelet became the first women to have a paper published by the Paris Academy, following a contest on the nature of fire.^[36]
• 1740: French polymath Émilie du Châtelet published Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics), providing a metaphysical basis for Newtonian physics.^[37]
• 1748: Swedish agronomist Eva Ekeblad became the first woman member of the Royal 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.^[38]
• 1751: 19-year-old Italian physicist Cristina Roccati received her PhD from the University of Bologna.^[39]
• 1753: Jane Colden, an American, was the only female biologist mentioned by Carl Linnaeus in his masterwork Species Plantarum.^[40]
• 1755: After the death of her husband, Italian anatomist Anna Morandi Manzolini took his place at the University of Bologna, becoming a professor of anatomy and establishing an internationally-known laboratory for anatomical research.^[41]
• 1757: French astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute worked with mathematicians Alexis Clairaut and Joseph Lalande to calculate the next arrival of Haley's Comet.^[42]
• 1760: American horticulturalist Martha Daniell Logan began corresponding with botanic specialist and collector John Bartram, regularly exchanging seeds, plants and botanical knowledge with him.^[43]
• 1762: French astronomer Nicole-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 of Connaissance des Temps.^[42]
• 1766: French chemist Geneviève Thiroux d'Arconville published her study on putrefaction. 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 for royal privilege by fellow chemist Pierre-Joseph Macquer.^[44]
• 1776: At the University of Bologna, Italian physicist Laura Bassi became the first woman appointed as chair of physics at a university.^[35]
• 1782 – 1791: French chemist and mineralogist Claudine 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.^[45]
• c. 1787 – 1797: Self-taught Chinese astronomer Wang 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.^[46][47]
• 1789: French astronomer Louise du Pierry, the first Parisian woman to become an astronomy professor, taught the first astronomy courses specifically open to female students.^[48]
• 1794: Scottish chemist Elizabeth Fulhame invented the concept of catalysis and published a book on her findings.^[49]
• c. 1796 – 1820: During the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor, astronomer Huang 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.^[46]
• 1797: English science writer and schoolmistress Margaret Bryan published A Compendious System of Astronomy, including an engraving of herself and her two daughters. She dedicated the book to her students.^[50]

Early 19th century

English palaeontologist Mary Anning

English mathematician and computer programmer Ada Lovelace

American astronomer Maria Mitchell

• 1808: Anna Sundström began assisting Jacob Berzelius in his laboratory, becoming one of the first Swedish women chemists.^[51]
• 1815: English archaeologist Lady Hester Stanhope used a medieval Italian manuscript to locate a promising archaeological site in Ashkelon, becoming the first archaeologist to begin an excavation in the Palestinian region. It was one of the earliest examples of the use of textual sources in field archaeology.^[52]
• 1816: French mathematician and physicist Sophie Germain became the first women to win a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her work on elasticity theory.^[53]
• 1823: English palaeontologist and fossil collector Mary Anning discovered the first complete Plesiosaurus.^[36]
• 1830 – 1837: Belgian botanist Marie-Anne Libert published her four-volume Plantae cryptogamicae des Ardennes, a collection of 400 species of mosses, ferns, lichen, algae and fungi from the Ardennes region. Her contributions to systemic cryptogamic studies were formally recognized by Prussian emperor Friedrich-Wilhelm III, and Libert received a gold medal of merit.^[54]
• 1832: French marine biologist Jeanne Villepreux-Power invented the first glass aquarium, using it to assist in her scientific observations of Argonauta argo.^[55]
• 1833: English phycologists Amelia Griffiths and Mary Wyatt published two books on local British seaweeds. Griffiths had an internationally respected reputation as a skilled seaweed collector and scholar, and Swedish botanist Carl Agardh had earlier named the seaweed genus Griffithsia in her honour.^[56]
• 1835: Scottish polymath Mary Somerville and German astronomer Caroline Herschel were elected the first female members of the Royal Astronomical Society.^[57][58]
• 1836: Early English geologist and paleaontologist Etheldred Benett, known for her extensive collection of several thousand fossils, was appointed a member of the 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.^[59][60]
• 1840: Scottish fossil collector and illustrator Lady Eliza Maria Gordon-Cumming invited geologists Louis Agassiz, William Buckland and Roderick Murchison to examine her collection of fish fossils. Agassiz confirmed several of Gordon-Cumming's discoveries as new species.^[61]
• 1843: During a nine-month period in 1842–43, English mathematician Ada Lovelace translated Luigi Menabrea’s article on Charles Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes.^[62] 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.^[63][64] The engine was never completed so her program was never tested.^[65]
• 1843: British botanist and pioneering photographer Anna Atkins self-published her book Photographs of British Algae, illustrating the work with cyanotypes. Her book was the first book on any subject to be illustrated by photographs.^[66]
• 1846: British zoologist Anna Thynne built the first stable, self-sustaining marine aquarium.^[67]
• 1848: American astronomer Maria Mitchell became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; she had discovered a new comet the year before.^[68]
• 1848 – 1849: English scientist Mary Anne Whitby, a pioneer in western silkworm cultivation, collaborated with Charles Darwin in researching the hereditary qualities of silkworms.^[69][70]
• 1850: The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences accepted its first women members: astronomer Maria Mitchell, entomologist Margaretta Morris, and science educator Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps.^[71]

Late 19th century

Welsh astronomer Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn

Russian scientist Sofia Kovalevskaya

American chemist Josephine Silone-Yates

American geologist Florence Bascom

• 1855: Working with her father, Welsh astronomer and photographer Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn produced some of the earliest photographs of the moon.^[72]
• 1856: American atmospheric scientist Eunice Newton Foote presented her paper “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays" at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Her paper provided the first scientific explanation of the greenhouse effect.^[73]
• 1862: Belgian botanist Marie-Anne Libert became the first woman to join the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium. She was named an honorary member.^[54]
• 1863: German naturalist Amalie Dietrich arrived in Australia to collect plant, animal and anthropological specimens for the German Godeffroy 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 of Aboriginal skeletons – and the possible incitement of violence against Aboriginal people – for anthropological research purposes.^[74][75]
• 1865: English geologist Elizabeth Carne was elected the first female Fellow of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall.^[76]
• 1870: Ellen Swallow Richards became the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.^[77]
• 1870: Russian chemist Anna Volkova became the first woman member of the Russian Chemical Society.^[78]
• 1874: Julia Lermontova became the first Russian woman to receive a PhD in chemistry.^[78]
• 1875: Hungarian archaeologist Zsófia Torma excavated the site of Turdaș-Luncă in Hunedoara County, Romania. The site, which uncovered valuable prehistoric artifacts, became one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Europe.^[79]
• 1876 – 1878: American naturalist Mary Treat studied insectivorous plants in Florida. Her contributions to the scientific understanding of how these plants caught and digested prey were acknowledged by Charles Darwin and Asa Gray.^[80]
• 1878: English entomologist Eleanor Anne Ormerod became the first female Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. A few years afterwards, she was appointed as Consulting Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society.^[81][82]
• c. 1880: Self-taught German chemist Agnes Pockels began investigating surface tension, becoming a pioneering figure in the field of surface science. The measurement equipment she developed provided the basic foundation for modern quantitative analyses of surface films.^[83]
• 1883: American ethnologist Erminnie A. Smith, the first woman field ethnographer, published her collection of Iroquois legends Myths of the Iroquois.^[84]
• 1884: English zoologist Alice Johnson's paper on newt embryos became the first paper authored by a woman to appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.^[85]
• 1885: British naturalist Marian Farquharson became the first female Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.^[86]
• 1886: Botanist Emily Lovira Gregory became the first woman member of the American Society of Naturalists.^[87]
• 1887: Rachel Lloyd became the first American woman to receive a PhD in chemistry, completing her research at the Swiss University of Zurich.^[88]
• 1888: Russian scientist Sofia Kovalevskaya discovered the Kovalevskaya top, one of a brief list of known rigid body motion examples that are tractable by manipulating equations by hand.^[89][90]
• 1888: American chemist Josephine Silone Yates was appointed head of the Department of Natural Sciences at Lincoln Institute (later Lincoln University), becoming the first black woman to head a college science department.^[91][92]
• 1889: Geologist Mary Emilie Holmes became the first female Fellow of the Geological Society of America.^[93]
• 1890: Austrian-born chemist Ida Freund became the first woman to work as a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She was promoted to full lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge.^[94]
• 1890: Popular science educator and author Agnes Giberne co-founded the British Astronomical Association.^[95] Subsequently, English astronomer Elizabeth Brown was appointed the Director of the association's Solar Section, well known for her studies in sun spots and other solar phenomena.^[96]
• 1891: American-born astronomer Dorothea Klumpke was appointed as Head of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory. For the next decade, in addition to completing her doctorate of science, she worked on the Carte du Ciel mapping project. She was recognized for her work with the first Prix de Dames award from the Société astronomique de France and named an Officier of the Paris Academy of Sciences.^[97]
• 1892: American psychologist Christine Ladd-Franklin presented her evolutionary theory on the development of colour vision to the International Congress of Psychology. Her theory was the first to emphasize colour vision as an evolutionary trait.^[98]
• 1893: Florence Bascom became the second woman to earn her Ph.D in geology in the United States, and the first woman to receive a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University.^[99][100] Geologists consider her to be the "first woman geologist in this country [America]."^[101]
• 1893: American botanist Elizabeth Gertrude Britton became a charter member of the Botanical Society of America.^[102]
• 1895: English physiologist Marion Bidder became the first woman to speak and present her own paper at a meeting of the Royal Society.^[103]
• 1896: Florence Bascom became the first woman to work for the United States Geological Survey.^[104][105]
• 1896: English mycologist and lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith became a founding member of the British Mycological Society. She later served as president twice.^[106][107]
• 1897: American cytologists and zoologists Katharine Foot and Ella 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.^[108]
• 1897: American physicist Isabelle 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 the University of Chicago.^[109][110]
• 1898: Danish physicist Kirstine Meyer was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.^[111]
• 1898: Italian malacologist Marianna Paulucci donated her collection of specimens to the Royal Museum of Natural History in Florence, Italy (Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze). Paulucci was the first scientist to compile and publish a species list of Italian malacofauna.^[112]
• 1899: American physicists Marcia Keith and Isabelle Stone became charter members of the American Physical Society.^[113][110]
• 1899: Irish physicist Edith Anne Stoney was appointed a physics lecturer at the London School of Medicine for Women, becoming the first woman medical physicist. She later became a pioneering figure in the use of x-ray machines on the front lines of World War I.^[114]

Early 20th century

1910s

Polish-born physicist and chemist Marie Curie

American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Canadian geneticist Carrie Derick

• 1911: Polish-born physicist and chemist Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which she received "[for] the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".^{[132][133][134]}
• 1911: Norwegian biologist Kristine Bonnevie became the first woman member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[135]
• 1912: American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt studied the bright-dim cycle periods of Cepheid stars, then found a way to calculate the distance from such stars to Earth.^[132]
• 1912: Canadian botanist and geneticist Carrie Derick was appointed a professor of morphological botany at McGill University. She was the first woman to become a full professor in any department at a Canadian university.^[136]
• 1913: Regina Fleszarowa became the first Polish woman to receive a PhD in natural sciences.^[137]
• 1913: Izabela Textorisová, the first Slovakian woman botanist, published "Flora Data from the County of Turiec" in the journal Botanikai Kozeményiek. Her work uncovered more than 100 previously unknown species of plants from the Turiec area.^[138]
• 1913: Canadian physician and chemist Maude Menten co-authored a paper on enzyme kinetics, leading to the development of the Michaelis–Menten kinetics equation.^[139]
• 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 Whiteley, was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her wartime contributions.^[140]
• 1914: British-born mycologist Ethel Doidge became the first woman in South Africa to receive a doctorate in any subject, receiving her doctorate of science degree from the University of the Good Hope. She wrote her thesis on "A bacterial disease of mango".^[141]
• 1916: Isabella Preston became the first female professional plant hybridist in Canada, producing the George C. Creelman trumpet lily. Her lily later received an Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.^[142]
• 1916: Chika Kuroda became the first Japanese woman to earn a bachelor of science degree, studying chemistry at the Tohoku Imperial University. After graduation, she was subsequently appointed an assistant professor at the university.^[143]
• 1917: American zoologist Mary J. Rathbun received her PhD from the George 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 of crustacean, and developed a system for crustacean-related records at the Smithsonian Museum.^[144]
• 1917: Dutch biologist and geneticist Jantina Tammes became the first female university professor in the Netherlands. She was appointed an extraordinary professor of phytopathology at the University of Utrecht.^[145]
• 1918: German physicist and mathematician Emmy Noether proved Noether's theorem, a pivotal result in physics that established the link between symmetries and conservation laws.
• 1919: Kathleen Maisey Curtis became the first New Zealand woman to earn a Doctorate of Science degree (DSc), completing her thesis on Synchytrium endobioticum (potato wart disease) at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. Her research was cited as "the most outstanding result in mycological research that had been presented for ten years".^[146]

1920s

Japanese biologist Kono Yasui

• 1920: Louisa Bolus was elected a Fellow of the Royal 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.^[147]
• 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 the urinary tract.^[148]
• 1924: Florence Bascom became the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America.^[116]
• 1925: Mexican-American botanist Ynes 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.^[149]
• 1925: American medical scientist Florence Sabin became the first woman elected to the National Academy of Science.^[150]
• 1925: British-American astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin established that hydrogen is the most common element in stars, and thus the most abundant element in the universe.^[151]
• 1927: Kono Yasui became the first Japanese woman to earn a doctorate in science, studying at the Tokyo Imperial University and completing her thesis on "Studies on the structure of lignite, brown coal, and bituminous coal in Japan".^[152]
• 1928: Alice Evans became the first woman elected president of the Society of American Bacteriologists.^[153]
• 1928: Helen Battle became the first woman to earn a PhD in marine biology in Canada.^[154]
• 1928: British biologist Kathleen Carpenter published the first English-language textbook devoted to freshwater ecology: Life in Inland Waters.^[155]
• 1929: American botanist Margaret Clay Ferguson became the first woman president of the Botanical Society of America.^[156]

1930s

French chemist Irène Joliot-Curie

Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner

• 1932: Michiyo Tsujimura became the first Japanese woman to earn a doctorate in agriculture. She studied at the Tokyo Imperial University, and her doctoral thesis was entitled "On the Chemical Components of Green Tea".^[157]
• 1933: Hungarian scientist Elizabeth Rona received the Haitinger Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences for her method of extracting polonium.^[158][159]
• 1933: American bacteriologist Ruth Ella Moore became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the natural sciences, completing her doctorate in bacteriology at Ohio State University.^[160]
• 1935: French chemist Irène Joliot-Curie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Frédéric Joliot-Curie "for their synthesis of new radioactive elements".^[161]
• 1935: American plant hybridist Grace Sturtevant, the "First Lady of Iris", received the American Iris Society's Gold Medal for her lifetime's work.^[162]
• 1936: Edith Patch became the first female president of the Entomological Society of America.^[163]
• 1936: Mycologist Kathleen Maisey Curtis was elected the first female Fellow at the Royal Society of New Zealand.^[146][164]
• 1936: Danish seismologist and geophysicist Inge Lehmann discovered that the Earth has a solid inner core distinct from its molten outer core.^[165]
• 1937: Canadian forensic pathologist Frances Gertrude McGill assisted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in establishing their first forensic detection laboratory.^[166]
• 1937: Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain became the first female Haitian anthropologist and the first Haitian person to complete a PhD, receiving her doctoral degree from the University of Paris.^{[167][168][169]}
• 1937: Marietta Blau and her student Hertha Wambacher, both Austrian physicists, received the Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for their work on cosmic ray observations using the technique of nuclear emulsions.^[170][171]
• 1938: Geologist Alice Wilson became the first woman appointed as Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada.^[131]
• 1938: South African naturalist Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered a living coelacanth fish caught near the Chalumna river. The species had been believed to be extinct for over 60 million years. It was named latimeria chalumnae in her honour.^[172]
• 1939: Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner, along with Otto Hahn, led the small group of scientists who first discovered nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extra neutron; the results were published in early 1939.^[173][174]
• 1939: French physicist Marguerite Perey discovered francium.^[175]

1940s

Austrian-American biochemist Gerty Cori

American biochemist Marie Maynard Daly

• 1941: American scientist Ruth Smith Lloyd became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in Anatomy.^[176]
• 1942: American geologist Marguerite Williams became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in geology in the United States. She completed her doctorate, entitled A History of Erosion in the Anacostia Drainage Basin, at Catholic University.^[177][178]
• 1942: Native American aerospace engineer Mary Golda Ross became employed at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, where she provided troubleshooting for military aircraft. She went on to work for NASA, developing operational requirements, flight plans, and a Planetary Flight Handbook for spacecraft missions such as the Apollo program.^[179]

• 1943: British geologist Eileen Guppy was promoted to the rank of assistant geologist, therefore becoming the first female geology graduate appointed to the scientific staff of the British Geological Survey.^[180]
• 1944: Indian chemist Asima Chatterjee became the first Indian woman to receive a doctorate of science, completing her studies at the University of Calcutta. She went on to establish the Department of Chemistry at Lady Brabourne College.^[181]
• 1945: American physicists and mathematicians Frances Spence, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Jean Bartik and Kathleen Antonelli programmed the electronic general-purpose computer ENIAC, becoming some of the world's first computer programmers.^[182]
• 1947: Austrian-American biochemist Gerty Cori became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which she received along with Carl Ferdinand Cori "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen", and Bernardo Alberto Houssay "for his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of sugar".^{[183][184][185]}
• 1947: American biochemist Marie 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" at Columbia University.^[186]
• 1947: Berta Karlik, an Austrian physicist, was awarded the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for her discovery of Astatine^[187]
• 1948: Canadian plant pathologist and mycologist Margaret Newton became the first woman to be awarded the Flavelle Medal from the Royal Society of Canada, in recognition of her extensive research in wheat rust fungal disease. Her experiments led to the development of rust-resistant strains of wheat.^[188]
• 1949: Botanist Valida Tutayug 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.^[189]

Late 20th century

1950s

Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu

Australian geologist Dorothy Hill

• 1950s: Chinese-American medical scientist Tsai-Fan Yu co-founded a clinic at Mount Sinai Medical Center for the study and treatment of gout. Working with Alexander B. Gutman, Yu established that levels of uric acid were a factor in the pain experienced by gout patients, and subsequently developed multiple effective drugs for the treatment of gout.^[190]
• 1950: Isabella Abbott became the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in any science; hers was in botany.^[191][192]
• 1950: American microbiologist Esther Lederberg became the first to isolate lambda bacteriophage, a DNA virus, from Escherichia coli K-12.^[193]
• 1952: American computer scientist Grace Hopper completed what is considered to be the first compiler, a program that allows a computer user to use English-like words instead of numbers. It was known as the A-0 compiler.^[194]
• 1952: Photograph 51, an X-ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA, was taken by Raymond Gosling in May 1952, working as a PhD student under the supervision of British chemist and biophysicist Rosalind Franklin;^{[195][196][197][198]} it was critical evidence^[199] in identifying the structure of DNA.^[200]
• 1952: Canadian agriculturalist Mary MacArthur became the first female Fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada for her contributions to the science of food dehydration and freezing.^[201][202]
• 1953: Canadian-British radiobiologist Alma Howard co-authored a paper proposing that cellular life transitions through four distinct periods. This became the first concept of the cell cycle.^[203]
• 1954: Lucy Cranwell was the first female recipient of the Hector Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand. She was recognized for her pioneering work with pollen in the emerging field of palynology.^[204]
• 1955: Moira Dunbar became the first female glaciologist to study sea ice from a Canadian icebreaker ship.^{[205][206][207]}
• 1955: Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi published her research on measuring carbonic 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.^[208]
• 1955 – 1956: Soviet marine biologist Maria Klenova became the first woman scientist to work in the Antarctic, conducting research and assisting in the establishment of the Mirny Antarctic station.^[209]
• 1956: Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu conducted a nuclear physics experiment in collaboration with the Low Temperature Group of the US National Bureau of Standards.^[210] The experiment, becoming known as the Wu experiment, showed that parity could be violated in weak interaction.^[211]
• 1956: Dorothy Hill became the first Australian woman elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.^[212]
• 1957 – 1958: Chinese scientist Lanying Lin produced China's first germanium and silicon mono-crystals, subsequently pioneering new techniques in semiconductor development.^[213]
• 1959: Chinese astronomer Ye Shuhua led the development of the Joint Chinese Universal Time System, which became the Chinese national standard for measuring universal time.^[214]
• 1959: Susan Ofori-Atta, the first Ghanaian woman physician, became a founding member of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[215][216]

1960s

British primatologist Jane Goodall

American NASA scientist Katherine Johnson

• 1960: British primatologist Jane 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.^[217][218]
• 1960: American medical physicist Rosalyn Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones" along with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally who received it "for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain".^[219]
• Early 1960s: German-Canadian metallurgist Ursula Franklin studied levels of radioactive isotope strontium-90 that were appearing in the teeth of children as a side effect of nuclear weapons testing fallout. Her research influenced the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.^[220]
• 1960s: American mathematician Katherine Johnson calculated flight paths at NASA for manned space flights.^[221]
• 1961: Indian chemist Asima Chatterjee became the first female recipient of a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. She was recognized in the Chemical Sciences category for her contributions to phytomedicine.^[222]
• 1962: South African botanist Margaret Levyns became the first woman president of the Royal Society of South Africa.^[223]
• 1962: French physicist Marguerite Perey became the first female Fellow elected to the Académie des Sciences.^[224]
• 1963: Elsa G. Vilmundardóttir became the first female Icelandic geologist, completing her studies at Stockholm University.^[225]
• 1963: Maria Goeppert Mayer became the first American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics; she shared the prize with J. Hans D. Jensen "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure” and Eugene Paul Wigner "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".^{[226][227][228]}
• 1964: British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances".^[229]
• 1965: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller became the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science.^[230] Her thesis was titled "Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns."^[231]
• 1966: Japanese immunologist Teruko Ishizaka, working with Kimishige Ishizaka, discovered the antibody class Immunoglobulin E (IgE).^[232]
• 1967: British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars.^[233]
• 1967: Sue Arnold became the first female British Geological Survey person to go to sea on a research vessel.^[180]
• 1967: South African radiobiologist Tikvah Alper discovered that scrapie, 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 by prions.^[234][235]
• 1969: Beris Cox became the first female paleontologist in the British Geological Survey.^[180]
• 1969: Ukrainian-born astronomer Svetlana Gerasimenko co-discovered the 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet.^[236]

1980s

Chinese-American virologist Flossie Wong-Staal

• 1980: Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi became the first woman elected to the Science Council of Japan.^[252]
• 1980: Nigerian geophysicist Deborah Ajakaiye became the first woman in any West African country to be appointed a full professor of physics.^[253][254] Over the course of her scientific career, she became the first female Fellow elected to the Nigerian Academy of Science, and the first female dean of science in Nigeria.^[255]
• 1983: American cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of genetic transposition; she was the first woman to receive that prize without sharing it, and the first American woman to receive any unshared Nobel Prize.^{[256][257][258][259][260]}
• 1983: Brazilian agronomist Johanna Döbereiner became a founding Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences.^[261]
• 1983: Indian immunologist Indira Nath became the first woman scientist to receive the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award in the Medical Sciences category.^[262][243]
• 1983: Geologist Sudipta Sengupta and marine biologist Aditi Pant became the first Indian women to visit the Antarctic.^[263]
• 1985: After identifying HIV as the cause of AIDS, Chinese-American virologist Flossie Wong-Staal became the first scientist to clone and genetically map the HIV virus, enabling the development of the first HIV blood screening tests.^[264]
• 1986: Italian neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Stanley Cohen, "for their discoveries of growth factors".^[265]
• 1988: American biochemist and pharmacologist Gertrude B. Elion received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with James W. Black and George H. Hitchings "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment".^[266]
• 1988: American scientist and inventor Patricia 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.^[267]

1990s

Lithuanian-Canadian primatologist Birutė Galdikas

Chilean astronomer María Teresa Ruiz

• 1991: Doris Malkin Curtis became the first woman president of the Geological Society of America.^[268]
• 1991: Indian geologist Sudipta Sengupta became the first woman scientist to receive the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award in the Earth Sciences category.^[269][243]
• 1992: Edith M. Flanigen became the first woman awarded the Perkin Medal (widely considered the highest honor in American industrial chemistry) for her outstanding achievements in applied chemistry.^[270][271] The medal especially recognized her syntheses of aluminophosphate and silicoaluminophosphate molecular sieves as new classes of materials.^[271]
• 1995: German biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus, "for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development".^[272]
• 1995: British geomorphologist Marjorie Sweeting published the first comprehensive Western account of China's karst, entitled Karst in China: its Geomorphology and Environment.^[273][274]
• 1995: Israeli-Canadian mathematical biologist Leah Keshet became the first woman president of the international Society for Mathematical Biology.^[275]
• 1995: Jane Plant became the first female Deputy Director of the British Geological Survey.^[180]
• 1995: Inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission discovered that Iraqi microbiologist Rihab Taha, nicknamed "Dr. Germ", had been overseeing a secret 10-year biological warfare development program in Iraq.^[276][277]
• 1997: Lithuanian-Canadian primatologist Birutė Galdikas received the Tyler 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.^[278]
• 1997: Chilean astronomer María Teresa Ruiz discovered Kelu 1, one of the first observed brown dwarves. In recognition of her discovery, she became the first woman to receive the Chilean National Prize for Exact Sciences.^[279][280]
• Late 1990s: Ethiopian-American chemist Sossina M. Haile developed the first solid acid fuel cell.^[281][282]

21st century

Moroccan astronomer Merieme Chadid

Kenyan ichthyologist Dorothy Wanja Nyingi

Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser

Canadian physicist Donna Strickland

American chemical engineer Frances Arnold

• 2000: Venezuelan astrophysicist Kathy 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.^[283]
• 2003: American geophysicist Claudia Alexander oversaw the final stages of Project Galileo, a space exploration mission that ended at the planet Jupiter.^[284]
• 2004: American biologist Linda B. Buck received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Richard Axel "for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system".^[285]
• 2006: Chilean biochemist Cecilia Hidalgo Tapia became the first woman to receive the Chilean National Prize for Natural Sciences.^[286]
• 2006: Chinese-American biochemist Yizhi Jane Tao led a team of researchers to become the first to map the atomic structure of Influenza A, contributing to antiviral research.^[287][288]
• 2006: Parasitologist Susan Lim became the first Malaysian scientist elected to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.^[289]
• 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 major observatory in the South Pole.^[290]
• 2007: Using satellite imagery, Egyptian geomorphologist Eman Ghoneim discovered traces of an 11,000-year-old mega lake in the Sahara Desert. The discovery shed light on the origins of the largest modern groundwater reservoir in the world.^[291]
• 2007: Physicist Ibtesam Badhrees was the first Saudi Arabian woman to become a member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).^[292]
• 2008: French virologist Francoise Barre-Sinoussi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Harald zur Hausen and Luc Montagnier, "for their discovery of HIV, human immunodeficiency virus".^[293]
• 2008: American-born Australian Penny Sackett becomes Australia's first female Chief Scientist.^[294]
• 2009: American molecular biologist Carol W. Greider received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase".^[295]
• 2009: Israeli crystallographer Ada E. Yonath, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".^[296]
• 2009: Chinese geneticist Zeng Fanyi and her research team published their experiment results proving that induced pluripotent stem cells can be used to generate whole mammalian bodies – in this case, live mice.^[297]
• 2010: Marcia McNutt became the first female director of the United States Geological Survey.^[298]
• 2011: Kazakhstani neuroscience student and computer hacker Alexandra Elbakyan launched Sci-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 company Elsevier, and Sci-Hub was subsequently taken down, but it reappeared under different domain names.^[299]
• 2011: Taiwanese-American astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma led a team of scientists in discovering two of the largest black holes ever observed.^[300]
• 2012: Clara Lazen, then a fifth grader, discovered the molecule tetranitratoxycarbon.^[301]
• 2013: Canadian genetic specialist Turi King identified the 500-year-old skeletal remains of King Richard III.^[302]
• 2013: Kenyan ichthyologist Dorothy Wanja Nyingi published the first guide to freshwater fish species of Kenya.^[303]
• 2014: Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist May-Britt Moser received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe, "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain".^[304]
• 2014: American paleoclimatologist and marine geologist Maureen Raymo became the first woman to be awarded the Wollaston Medal, the highest award of the Geological Society of London.^[305][306]
• 2014: American theoretical physicist Shirley Anne Jackson was awarded the National Medal of Science. Jackson had been the first African-American woman to receive a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the early 1970s, and the first woman to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.^[307][308]
• 2015: Chinese medical scientist Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura; she received it "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria".^[309]
• 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 the University of Western Australia.^[310][311]
• 2016: Marcia McNutt became the first woman president of the American National Academy of Sciences.^[312]
• 2018: British astrophysicists Hiranya Peiris and Joanna Dunkley and Italian cosmologist Licia Verde were among 27 scientists awarded the Breakthrough 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".^[313]
• 2018: British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell received the special Breakthrough 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.^[314]
• 2018: Canadian physicist Donna Strickland received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics"; she shared it with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou.^[315][316]
• 2018: Frances Arnold received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the directed evolution of enzymes"; she shared it with George Smith and Gregory Winter, who received it "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies".^[317] This made Frances the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.^[318]
• 2018: For the first time in history, women received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Prize in Physics in the same year.^[319]

See also

• Lists of women in science
• Timeline of women in geology
• Timeline of women in library science
• Timeline of women in library science in the United States
• Timeline of women in mathematics
• Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
• Timeline of women in science in the United States

References

External links

• Famous female scientists: A timeline of pioneering women in science from the website of Dr Helen Klus