The foundation for the Nobel Prizes was laid in 1896 when Alfred Nobel, a renowned scientist and inventor, decided to leave a considerable amount of his wealth to establish these prizes.
The first edition took place in 1901 and, since then, it has been honoring extraordinary men and women in science who demonstrated outstanding achievements in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and for work in peace.
When we think about women and the Nobel Prize, the first person that pops into our mind is Marie Curie, who was the first woman to receive the prize and the only one who received it twice. But we’ll discuss more about her later in the article.
According to the Nobel Prize official website, between 1901 and 2017, 48 women have been awarded the prize.
In this post, I want to talk about 6 women in science who have made significant contributions to the field and science and won the Nobel Prize.
Influential Women in Science You Need to Know about
1. Marie Curie
Marie Curie studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In 1895, she became interested in what the physicist Henri Becquerel discovered — the fact that minerals containing uranium emit a strong radiation.
Along with her husband, Pierre Curie, they investigated this phenomenon and examined a lot of minerals for signs of radioactivity.
They discovered that the mineral pitchblende was more radioactive than uranium, so the couple concluded it must contain other radioactive substances. In 1898, they extracted two elements which were unknown until then: polonium and radium. Thanks to this discovery, Marie Curie received her first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.
In 1911, she was awarded the second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, which recognized her work when it comes to isolating the radium and studying the nature of radioactive elements through scientific experiments.
2. Irène Joliot-Curie
Irène was the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. During the time she was working at the institute founded by her parents, she conducted the work that got her the Nobel Prize in 1935. She shared the prize with her husband, Frédéric Joliot.
In 1924, they bombarded aluminum with alpha particles. This helped them realize that the aluminum continued to be radioactive even after the radiation source was removed.
Irène Joliot-Curie managed to create, for the first time in history, artificial radioactivity.
3. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Dorothy received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, she started working at the Oxford University in 1934 as a chemistry researcher.
During the years she spent at Oxford, Dorothy used X-ray crystallography to study the structures of important biochemical substances.
Thanks to this technique, she managed to determine the structure of penicillin in 1946, and ten years later, the structure of vitamin B12, which is the most complex one out of all the vitamins.
4. Rosalyn Yalow
At the beginning of WWII, a lot of scholarships became available for women and so Rosalyn managed to get one and earn her Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Illinois in 1945.
With the help of doctor Solomon Berson, she was able to develop radioimmunoassay (RIA), which is a technique used to measure small quantities of substances in the body, such as hormones, enzymes and vitamins.
They were even able to prove that type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, which busted the myth that said it’s actually caused by a lack of insulin.
5. Youyou Tu
Youyou Tu studied pharmacy at the Medical School of Peking University. Her goal was to find new ways which would help cure people of certain diseases.
In the 1960’s, the resurgence of malaria led to an increased mortality, especially in the South East Asian countries. The Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine assigned Youyou Tu to conduct a project in order to find antimalarial drugs among traditional Chinese medicines.
The Chinese medical literature included a lot of records on malaria, so she had quite a few books to review.
The project took three years to complete. During that time, she ran a series of experiments which helped her extract a substance called artemisinin, which inhibits the malaria parasite.
Thanks to this discovery, two hundred million malaria patients received the treatment containing artemisinin.
Youyou Tu was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015.
6. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi earned her Ph.D. at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where she studied retroviruses.
1983 was the year when she made a breakthrough along with Luc Montaigner — they discovered a retrovirus which attacked the lymphocytes in patients who had swollen lymph glands. The retrovirus was later called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
In 2008, she was awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this achievement.
Science Is for Everyone
Even though the science industry is dominated by men, more initiatives are motivating women to keep them empowered and being part of science projects leading to fantastic achievements. This article shows a few of the amazing women who had succeed as a scientist or researcher.
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