These 15 women in science are presented in alphabetical order. Some have won Nobel Prizes while some have contributed to prizes won by others, yet were denied adequate recognition. They have, however, won many other prestigious awards for their work. Their birthdates range from 1867 to 1943. Detailed information for each can be found at the Nobel e-Museum.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, July 15, 1943--  •  Astronomer and Physicist.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jocelyn discovered pulsars (dense, burned-out stars) in 1967 at age 24 while a graduate student at Cambridge University. The Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Cambridge professors Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish in 1974 instead of Burnell, who received no credit for her discovery. She went on to marry, have a child, and work part time in astronomy and teaching for 20 years while her husband moved up the career ladder. After a divorce, Jocelyn became a full-time professor at The Open University in England in 1991—the third woman to become a physics professor in the United Kingdom.

Gerty Radnitz Cori, Aug. 15, 1896 - Oct. 26, 1957  •  Biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiolgy or Medicine 1947.
Gerty, a naturalized American originally from Prague, was the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the third woman in the world to win the category. She attended the Medical School of the German University of Prague, receiving a Doctorate in Medicine in 1920. After two years of working in a children’s hospital, she emigrated to America with her husband, Carl, who was also a doctor and biochemist. The two collaborated in New York, and were pioneers in the study of enzymes and hormones—their work had major implications for the understanding of diabetes. They shared the Nobel Prize with Bernardo Alberto Housssay of Argentina.

Marie Sklodowska Curie, Nov. 7, 1867 - July 4, 1934  •  Physicist and Radiochemist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 and in Chemistry 1911.
Marie was born in Warsaw, the youngest of five children. She and her siblings were all brilliant, but Marie and her sisters were not allowed to attend Warsaw University in Russian-dominated Poland. She was eventually educated at the University of Paris where her research project was measuring the magnetic properties of steel alloys. After earning two degrees, Marie married Pierre Curie and the two worked together on projects--including research on radioactive substances--until Pierre's accidental death in 1906. Marie carried on without him, raised their two daughters alone, and won two Nobel Prizes for her work with radium. She died from leukemia at age 67.

Gertrude Belle Elion, Jan. 23, 1918 - Feb. 21, 1999  •  Biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988.
Gertrude developed many drugs, including the first chemotherapy drug for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, and the first anti-viral medication, Acyclovir, plus treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases. Born to an immigrant family in New York City, Gertrude came from a long line of scholarly ancestors. With her insatiable thirst for knowledge and high grades, she entered Hunter College at 15 and graduated four years later with highest honors in 1937. She received her master’s degree in 1941. Because of the Great Depression, WWII, and the need to keep her laboratory job, Gertrude gave up her doctorate work but continued with research for the next half century. She shared the Nobel Prize with her colleague of 40 years, George Hitchings, and researcher Sir James Black.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin, July 25, 1920 - April 16, 1958  •  Physical Chemist.
One of the most famous examples of a woman researcher not being credited with an important discovery, Rosalind’s work on the structure of DNA molecules, using x-ray chrystallography helped explain the molecular basis of heredity. As a chemist and researcher at King’s College in England in her early 30s, Rosalind’s unpublished findings were presented at a routine seminar by her associate; the information was subsequently used, without her knowledge or permission, by competitors at Cambridge—James Watson and Francis Crick. The two men used her data to build their ultimately correct—and famous—description of the structure of DNA in 1953 and won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Rosalind died from cancer in 1958 at the age of 37 without receiving credit for her crucial discovery.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, May 12, 1910 - July 19, 1994  •  Physical Chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1964.
Born in 1910 in Egypt to British parents, Dorothy moved around to several small private schools as a child and received some of her education from a governess. At 10, she enjoyed small chemistry lessons in the form of growing crystals. But by the time Dorothy reached high school, she discovered she was deficient in math and that girls were not allowed to study chemistry. After overcoming these obstacles, Dorothy eventually studied chemistry at Oxford University. A brilliant student, she made notable advances in photographic crystallography, only to find there were no jobs for her after her 1932 graduation. With the help of friends, Dorothy found a job teaching chemistry at a women’s college, but was relegated to a dismal basement laboratory for her research. She persevered, however, and her work with penicillin crystals, Vitamin B12, and insulin earned her accolades and a Nobel Prize.

Irene Joliot-Curie, Sept. 12, 1897 - March 17, 1956  •  Radiochemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935.
Born to Marie and Pierre Curie, winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1903, daughter Irene was destined to follow her parents in a career in science. As an x-ray technician at age 18 for battlefield army surgeons during WWI, she had to convince surgeons there was a connection between three-dimensional geometry on two-dimensional x-rays. In her spare time, she studied math and physics and began her doctoral thesis. Her education was supplemented by her parents at home, and she earned her doctorate for research on alpha particles at the University of Paris. At the Radium Institute in Paris, Irene met Jean Frederic Joliot. The two were married and worked together on generating the first artificial radioactivity from stable elements for which they won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Like her mother, Irene died from leukemia.

Rita Levi-Montalcini, April 22, 1909--  •  Neuroembryologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986.
Rita's Italian father resisted his daughter's unconventional scientific pursuits, believing a professional career for her would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother. Rita, however, thought marriage was debasing to women and decided never to marry—she wanted to become a physician. Her father relented and hired tutors for her in mathematics, science, Latin, and Greek. After eight months of study, she passed entrance exams to the University of Turin's medical school in 1930; she graduated summa cum laude four years later in medicine and surgery and enrolled in a three-year specialization in neurology and psychiatry. Mussolini and WWII drove Rita underground to continue her laboratory experiments on chick embryos; she worked as a medical doctor in war refugee camps in Florence. After the war, Maria returned to university research and won the Nobel Prize the discovery of the "nerve growth factor" and "epidermal growth factor." She shared the prize with American biochemist Stanley Cohen.

Maria Goeppert Mayer, June 28, 1906 - Feb. 20, 1972  •  Mathematical Physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1963.
Maria’s father once told her to “never become just a woman,” a statement that did much to encourage Maria to pursue a life as a scientist. Her German family expected as much, as Maria’s forebears were university professors for seven generations. Her education was top-notch, and she was a brilliant student who earned a Ph.D. in theoretic physics—but despite good fortune, intelligence, and degrees, Maria had to settle for unpaid volunteer university work for 30 years. Nepotism rules prevented her from working where her husband did, at Johns Hopkins University. Motherhood kept her from devoting as much time as she would have liked to her career. It was ten years after winning the Nobel Prize when Maria finally received a full-time university salary, at the University of California at La Jolla. She won the prize for her discovery concerning nuclear shell structure. Maria is one of only two women to win the Nobel Prize in Physics; Marie Curie is the other.

Barbara McClintock, June 16, 1902 - Sept. 2, 1992  •  Geneticist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1983.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Barbara moved to New York with her parents and siblings when she was 6. Her education included a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D in botany at Cornell University in the 1920s. Women were not permitted to major in genetics, but Barbara studied maize, or corn, cytogenetics with a small group anyway. She conducted groundbreaking research on how genes in chromosomes could “move” during the breeding of maize plants resulting in genetic crossing-over and developed theories to explain how certain genes were responsible for affecting characteristics, such as the color of leaves. Barbara was known throughout her career as one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20th century; she was the first woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Lise Meitner, Nov. 7, 1878 - Oct. 27, 1968  •  Nuclear Physicist.
Born in Vienna, Lise's education stopped after age 14 simply because she was a girl. At 18, she told her father she had no interest in marriage and wanted to study physics—even though there were no jobs in physics for either men or women. He made her earn a certificate, in three years, to teach French as insurance for supporting herself. Then he hired a private tutor to help prepare her for university entrance exams. In two years she complete eight years of school work. At the University of Vienna, Lise became a nuclear physicist and discovered the process of nuclear fission—but the Nobel Prize was awarded to her research partner, Otto Hahn, instead. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, Lise explained that she never intended her work to produce "death-dealing weapons" and said, "You must not blame us scientists for the use to which war technicians have put our discoveries."

Emmy Noether, March 23, 1882 - April 14, 1935  •  Mathematician.
Called the "female version of Albert Einstein," Emmy came from a well-to-do Jewish family in Erlangen, Bavaria, where her father was a mathematics professor. Emmy studied to be a language teacher for a girls' school, but after certification she decided to study math at the university. Women could only study unofficially and with special permission. She was eventually allowed to enroll in Göttingen, Germany, and later at Erlangen, earning a Ph.D. in mathematics. She was crucial in the development of modern algebra, and some of her own theories contributed to Einstein’s general theory of relativity for which he received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. After working most of her life for little or no pay, Emmy was forced out of Germany by the Nazis in 1933. She was invited to teach at Bryn Mawr College, and died there only two years later at the age of 53.

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Oct. 20, 1942--  •  Developmental Biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1995.
Christiane is known for making one of the most important biological discoveries of all time: explaining how a single cell becomes a complex creature. She knew from the age of 12 that she wanted to be a biologist. In her native Germany, she studied plants and animals on her grandparents' farm, leading her to find answers to her many question in books. She credits good teachers—mostly women—with her interest in German literature, mathematics, and biology. While attending the University of Tübingen, she studied physics, math, theoretical mechanics, chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology. After marring fellow student Volker Nüsslein, Christiane finished her thesis on gene transcription in bacteria, and then began her famous work on explaining how a single cell develops into a complex living being. Working with fruit flies and their readily genetic mutations, Christiane became a developmental geneticist, whose work has relevance to the development of all multicellular organisms, including humans..

Chien-Shiung Wu, May 31, 1912 - Feb. 16, 1997  •  Experimental Nuclear Physicist.
During the time when Chien-Shiung lived in China, girls were only taught at home, if at all. Remarkably, her father believed firmly in equal rights for women and provided her with the best education that he possibly could. He knew about Western democracies and women’s emancipation, so he opened a school for girls. Chien-Shiung had to leave her close-knit family to attend higher education; she was an accomplished student and a political activist. She attended China’s elite National Central University in Nanjing and studied physics; she then earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1940. She taught at Smith College and Princeton University before joining Columbia in 1944, where she spent 37 years conducting research and teaching. In 1956, her experiment disproved the conservation of parity; her work centered on low-energy emission of electrons by decaying atoms. For Chien-Shiung’s work, the Nobel Prize in Physics was won the following year for the two theoretical physicists who had first doubted it, Tsung-Dao Lee of Columbia University and Chen Ning Yang, who is now at S.U.N.Y-Stony Brook. Chien-Shiung received no credit for her discovery.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, July 19, 1921--  •  Medical Physicist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977.
The first American-born woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, Rosalyn’s work in endocrinology has helped treat dwarfism, infertility, diabetes, and many others. She and her research partner, Soloman Berson, "invented" neuroendocrinology. Although Rosalyn's parents were poor, uneducated immigrants in New York City at the turn of the century, they valued books and learning. In school, Rosalyn’s interests went from math to chemistry; at Hunter College, she went from chemistry to physics, earning a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Illinois in 1945. She married Aaron Yalow, another nuclear physicist, in 1943. Rosalyn collaborated on research with Berson for 22 years; their radioimmunoassay method uses radioactivity to tag substances (in a test tube) to measure antibodies produced by the immune system. Aside from the benefits of treating diabetes, Rosalyn's discoveries and techniques help prevent mental retardation in babies with under active thyroid glands. Rosalyn had two children during her career.