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Women in physics

This article discusses women who have made an important contribution to the field of physics.

International physics awards

Nobel laureates

Five women have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded annually since 1901 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. These are:

Marie Curie was the first woman to be nominated in 1902 and to receive the prize in 1903 and shared 1/2 of the prize with her husband Pierre Curie for their joint work on radioactivity, discovered by Henri Becquerel who got the other half of the prize. Marie Curie was the first woman to also receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, making her the first person to win two Nobel prizes and, as of 2023, the only person to be awarded two Nobel prizes in two different scientific categories.

Maria Goeppert Mayer became the second woman to win the prize in 1963, for the theoretical development of the nuclear shell model, a half of the prize shared with J. Hans D. Jensen (the other half given to Eugene Wigner). Donna Strickland shared half of the prize in 2018 with Gérard Mourou, for their work in chirped pulse amplification beginning in the 1980s (the other half given to Arthur Ashkin). Andrea Ghez was the fourth female Nobel laureate in 2020, she shared one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel for the discovery of the supermassive compact object Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy (the other half given to Roger Penrose). In 2023, Anne L'Huillier shared the prize in equal parts with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz for their experimental contribution and development of attosecond physics. L'Huillier is the first female laureate to receive 1/3 of monetary award of the Nobel Prize in Physics (Curie, Goeppert–Mayer, Strickland and Ghez received 1/4).

Physicists and physicochemists that won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry include Marie Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie Curie, in 1935, and Dorothy Hodgkin in 1964. Nuclear physicist Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was the second female scientist to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977 for the development of radioimmunoassays. Human right activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, Narges Mohammadi, was trained in nuclear physics.

Nobel nominees and nominators

According to the Nobel archives (updated up to 1974), other physicists that were nominated to the Nobel Prize in Physics but did not receive it, include:

Irène Joliot-Curie and Dorothy Hodgkin were also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics, but received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 and 1964, respectively. Lise Meitner is the female physicist the most nominated, 16 times for Physics and 14 times for Chemistry. About 1.7% of the Nobel nominations in Physics up to 1970 were women.

Aside from the named above, other physicists and physicochemists that were nominated to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry but dit not receive it, include Ida Noddack, Marguerite Perey, Alberte Pullman, and Erika Cremer.

Up to 1974, ten female scientists have participated as nominators for the Nobel Prize in Physics. These are Katharina Boll-Dornberger, Margaret Burbidge, Marie Curie, Inga Fischer-Hjalmars, Maria Goeppert Mayer, Dorothy Hodgkin, Berta Karlik, Hertha Sponer, Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat and Anne Barbara Underhill.

Clarivate Citation

Several women have been selected as Clarivate Citation laureates in Physics, which makes an annual list of possible candidates for the Nobel Prize in Physics based on citation statistics, these include:

deceased, no longer eligible.

Wolf Prize

Two women have been awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics, awarded by the Wolf Foundation in Israel since 1978. They are:

Breakthrough Prize

Women who have been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics since 2012, include:

  • 2018 WMAP Probe team, 27 listed members, including Hiranya Peiris, Licia Verde, Janet L. Weiland and Joanna Dunkley for "For 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."
  • 2018 Special recognition to Jocelyn Bell Burnell for "For fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community."

Prizes only for female physicists

Topics named after female scientists

Female scientist have sometimes not been recognized in the naming of topics they discovered due to Matilda effect. Some physics phenomena that are named after female scientists include:

Physical models and theories

Physical phenomena and empirical laws

Physical theorems

Experiments and equipment

Timeline

Antiquity

  • : Aglaonice became the first female astronomer to be recorded in Ancient Greece.
  • c. 355–415 CE: Greek astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Hypatia became renowned as a respected academic teacher, editor of Ptolemy's Almagest astronomical data, and head of her own science academy.

16th century

  • 1572: astronomer Sophia Brahe assists her older brother Tycho Brahe finding a new bright object in the night sky, now known as called SN 1572 (a supernova). Sophia would help her brother in astronomy throughout his life.

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

21st century

2000s

2010s

2020s

See also

References