List of Female Nobel Prize Winners
Introduction
The Nobel Prize is a set of prestigious international awards given annually in several categories, including Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The prizes were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, engineer, and industrialist. This article focuses on the women who have been awarded the Nobel Prize across all categories.
Physics
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was Marie Curie, in 1903. She shared the prize with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, for their research on radiation. Curie was also the first person to win a Nobel Prize in two different fields, as she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.
The second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was Maria Goeppert Mayer, in 1963. She shared the prize with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Paul Wigner for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.
The third and most recent woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics is Donna Strickland, in 2018. She shared the prize with Gérard Mourou for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.
Chemistry
Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in 1911, for her services to the advancement of chemistry by 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.
The second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was Irene Joliot-Curie, in 1935. She shared the prize with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their synthesis of new radioactive elements.
The third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, in 1964, for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.
Medicine
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was Gerty Cori, in 1947. She shared the prize with her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori and Bernardo Alberto Houssay for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen.
The second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was Rosalyn Yalow, in 1977. She shared the prize with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally for their development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones.
Literature
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature was Selma Lagerlöf, in 1909, for her lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterizes her writings.
The second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature was Grazia Deledda, in 1926, for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general.
Peace
The first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Bertha von Suttner, in 1905, for her sincere peace activities.
The second woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Jane Addams, in 1931. She shared the prize with Nicholas Murray Butler for their leadership in the peace movement.