Women in science

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

An illustration of a woman teaching geometry, from a medieval illuminated manuscript of Euclid's Elements (c. 1310 C.E.)

The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments of women, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work peer-reviewed and accepted in major scientific journals and other publications. The historical, critical, and sociological study of these issues has become an academic discipline in its own right.

The involvement of

proto-science of alchemy in the first or second centuries CE During the Middle Ages, religious convents were an important place of education for women, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. The 11th century saw the emergence of the first universities; women were, for the most part, excluded from university education.[1] Outside academia, botany was the science that benefitted most from contributions of women in early modern times.[2] The attitude toward educating women in medical fields appears to have been more liberal in Italy than in other places. The first known woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field of studies was eighteenth-century Italian scientist Laura Bassi
.

Gender roles were largely deterministic in the eighteenth century and women made substantial advances in science. During the nineteenth century, women were excluded from most formal scientific education, but they began to be admitted into learned societies during this period. In the later nineteenth century, the rise of the women's college provided jobs for women scientists and opportunities for education. Marie Curie paved the way for scientists to study radioactive decay and discovered the elements radium and polonium.[3] Working as a physicist and chemist, she conducted pioneering research on radioactive decay and was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics and became the first person to receive a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sixty women have been awarded the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2022. Twenty-four women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine.[4]

Cross-cultural perspectives

In the 1970s and 1980s, many books and articles about women scientists were appearing; virtually all of the published sources ignored

women of color and women outside of Europe and North America.[5] The formation of the Kovalevskaia Fund in 1985 and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World in 1993 gave more visibility to previously marginalized women scientists, but even today there is a dearth of information about current and historical women in science in developing countries. According to academic Ann Hibner Koblitz:[6]

Most work on women scientists has focused on the personalities and scientific subcultures of Western Europe and North America, and historians of women in science have implicitly or explicitly assumed that the observations made for those regions will hold true for the rest of the world.

Koblitz has said that these generalizations about women in science often do not hold up cross-culturally:[7]

A scientific or technical field that might be considered 'unwomanly' in one country in a given period may enjoy the participation of many women in a different historical period or in another country. An example is engineering, which in many countries is considered the exclusive domain of men, especially in usually prestigious subfields such as electrical or mechanical engineering. There are exceptions to this, however. In the former Soviet Union all subspecialties of engineering had high percentages of women, and at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería of Nicaragua, women made up 70% of engineering students in 1990.

Historical examples

Ancient history

The involvement of women in the field of medicine has been recorded in several early civilizations. An ancient Egyptian physician, Peseshet (c. 2600–2500 B.C.E.), described in an inscription as "lady overseer of the female physicians",[8][9] is the earliest known female physician named in the history of science.[10] Agamede was cited by Homer as a healer in ancient Greece before the Trojan War (c. 1194–1184 BCE).[11][12][13] According to one late antique legend, Agnodice was the first female physician to practice legally in fourth century BCE Athens.[14]

The study of

Demodike from Cyme, wife of the Phrygian king, Midas, and daughter of King Agamemnon of Cyme.[16] A daughter of a certain Agamemnon, king of Aeolian Cyme, married a Phrygian king called Midas.[17] This link may have facilitated the Greeks "borrowing" their alphabet from the Phrygians because the Phrygian letter shapes are closest to the inscriptions from Aeolis.[17]

During the period of the

double boiler (bain-marie); the improvement or creation of distillation equipment of that time.[19][20] Such distillation equipment were called kerotakis (simple still) and the tribikos (a complex distillation device).[19]

Orestes, the Roman governor, which resulted in a mob of Cyril's supporters stripping her, dismembering her, and burning the pieces of her body.[24]

Medieval Europe

Hildegard of Bingen

The early parts of the European

Latin West was left with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production dramatically. Although nature was still seen as a system that could be comprehended in the light of reason, there was little innovative scientific inquiry.[25] The Arabic world deserves credit for preserving scientific advancements. Arabic scholars produced original scholarly work and generated copies of manuscripts from Classical periods.[26] During this period, Christianity underwent a period of resurgence, and Western civilization was bolstered as a result. This phenomenon was, in part, due to monasteries and nunneries that nurtured the skills of reading and writing, and the monks and nuns who collected and copied important writings produced by scholars of the past.[26][citation needed]

Female physician caring for a patient

As it mentioned before, convents were an important place of education for women during this period, for the monasteries and nunneries encourage the skills of reading and writing, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research.[26] An example is the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179 A.D), a famous philosopher and botanist, whose prolific writings include treatments of various scientific subjects, including medicine, botany and natural history (c. 1151–58).[27] Another famous German abbess was Hroswitha of Gandersheim (935–1000 A.D.)[26] that also helped encourage women to be intellectual. However, with the growth in number and power of nunneries, the all-male clerical hierarchy was not welcomed toward it, and thus it stirred up conflict by having backlash against women's advancement. That impacted many religious orders closed on women and disbanded their nunneries, and overall excluding women from the ability to learn to read and write. With that, the world of science became closed off to women, limiting women's influence in science.[26]

Entering the 11th century, the first universities emerged. Women were, for the most part, excluded from university education.[1] However, there were some exceptions. The Italian University of Bologna allowed women to attend lectures from its inception, in 1088.[28]

The attitude to educating women in medical fields in Italy appears to have been more liberal than in other places. The physician,

gynecology
, among other topics, are also often attributed to Trotula.

Thomasia de Mattio.[29][32]

Despite the success of some women, cultural biases affecting their education and participation in science were prominent in the Middle Ages. For example, Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Christian scholar, wrote, referring to women, "She is mentally incapable of holding a position of authority."[1]

Scientific Revolutions of 1600s and 1700s

Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century aristocrat, took part in some of the most important scientific debates of that time. She was, however, not inducted into the English Royal Society, although she was once allowed to attend a meeting. She wrote a number of works on scientific matters, including Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666) and Grounds of Natural Philosophy. In these works she was especially critical of the growing belief that humans, through science, were the masters of nature. The 1666 work attempted to heighten female interest in science. The observations provided a critique of the experimental science of Bacon and criticized microscopes as imperfect machines.[33]

Isabella Cortese, an Italian alchemist, is most known for her book I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese or The Secrets of Isabella Cortese. Cortese was able to manipulate nature in order to create several medicinal, alchemy and cosmetic "secrets" or experiments.[34] Isabella's book of secrets belongs to a larger book of secrets that became extremely popular among the elite during the 16th century. Despite the low percentage of literate women during Cortese's era, the majority of alchemical and cosmetic "secrets" in the book of secrets were geared towards women. This included but was not limited to pregnancy, fertility, and childbirth.[34]

Sophia Brahe, sister of Tycho Brahe, was a Danish Horticulturalist. Brahe was trained by her older brother in chemistry and horticulture but taught herself astronomy by studying books in German. Sophia visited her brother in the Uranienborg on numerous occasions and assisted on his project the De nova stella. Her observations lead to the discovery of the Supernova SN 1572 which helped refute the geocentric model of the universe.[35]

Tycho Wrote the Urania Titani about his sister Sophia and her husband Erik. The Urania presented Sophia and the Titan represented Erik. Tycho used this poem in order to show his appreciation for his sister and all of her work.

In Germany, the tradition of female participation in craft production enabled some women to become involved in observational science, especially

Academy of Science. She made original contributions, including the discovery of a comet. When her husband died, Winkelmann applied for a position as assistant astronomer at the Berlin Academy – for which she had experience. As a woman – with no university degree – she was denied the post. Members of the Berlin Academy feared that they would establish a bad example by hiring a woman. "Mouths would gape", they said.[37]

Winkelmann's problems with the Berlin Academy reflect the obstacles women faced in being accepted in scientific work, which was considered to be chiefly for men. No woman was invited to either the Royal Society of London nor the French Academy of Sciences until the twentieth century. Most people in the seventeenth century viewed a life devoted to any kind of scholarship as being at odds with the domestic duties women were expected to perform.

A founder of modern botany and

entomologist who was known for her artistic illustrations of plants and insects. Uncommon for that era, she traveled to South America and Surinam, where, assisted by her daughters, she illustrated the plant and animal life of those regions.[41]

Overall, the Scientific Revolution did little to change people's ideas about the nature of women – more specifically – their capacity to contribute to science just as men do. According to Jackson Spielvogel, 'Male scientists used the new science to spread the view that women were by nature inferior and subordinate to men and suited to play a domestic role as nurturing mothers. The widespread distribution of books ensured the continuation of these ideas'.[42]

Eighteenth century

Laura Bassi, the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe

Although women excelled in many scientific areas during the eighteenth century, they were discouraged from learning about plant reproduction. Carl Linnaeus' system of plant classification based on sexual characteristics drew attention to botanical licentiousness, and people feared that women would learn immoral lessons from nature's example. Women were often depicted as both innately emotional and incapable of objective reasoning, or as natural mothers reproducing a natural, moral society.[43]

The eighteenth century was characterized by three divergent views towards woman: that women were mentally and socially inferior to men, that they were equal but different, and that women were potentially equal in both mental ability and contribution to society.[44] While individuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed women's roles were confined to motherhood and service to their male partners, the Enlightenment was a period in which women experienced expanded roles in the sciences.[45]

The rise of salon culture in Europe brought philosophers and their conversation to an intimate setting where men and women met to discuss contemporary political, social, and scientific topics.[46] While Jean-Jacques Rousseau attacked women-dominated salons as producing 'effeminate men' that stifled serious discourse, salons were characterized in this era by the mixing of the sexes.[47]

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu defied convention by introducing smallpox inoculation through variolation to Western medicine after witnessing it during her travels in the Ottoman Empire.[48][49] In 1718 Wortley Montague had her son inoculated[49] and when in 1721 a smallpox epidemic struck England, she had her daughter inoculated.[50] This was the first such operation done in Britain.[49] She persuaded Caroline of Ansbach to test the treatment on prisoners.[50] Princess Caroline subsequently inoculated her two daughters in 1722.[49] Under a pseudonym, Wortley Montague published an article describing and advocating in favor of inoculation in September 1722.[51]

After publicly defending forty nine theses

university in Europe[53] But the university held the value that women were to lead a private life and from 1746 to 1777 she gave only one formal dissertation per year ranging in topic from the problem of gravity to electricity.[52] Because she could not lecture publicly at the university regularly, she began conducting private lessons and experiments from home in the year of 1749.[52] However, due to her increase in responsibilities and public appearances on behalf of the university, Bassi was able to petition for regular pay increases, which in turn was used to pay for her advanced equipment. Bassi earned the highest salary paid by the University of Bologna of 1,200 lire.[54] In 1776, at the age of 65, she was appointed to the chair in experimental physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences with her husband as a teaching assistant.[52]

According to Britannica,

infinitesimal calculus.[58] In 1750 she became the second woman to be granted a professorship at a European university. Also appointed to the University of Bologna she never taught there.[56][59]

The German

University of Halle in 1754.[61] She went on to analyse the obstacles preventing women from studying, among them housekeeping and children.[60] She became the first female medical doctor in Germany.[62]

Émilie du Châtelet in her writings criticizes John Locke's philosophy and emphasizes the necessity of the verification of knowledge.

In 1741–42

potatoes.[64][65] Potatoes had been introduced into Sweden in 1658 but had been cultivated only in the greenhouses of the aristocracy. Ekeblad's work turned potatoes into a staple food in Sweden, and increased the supply of wheat, rye and barley available for making bread, since potatoes could be used instead to make alcohol. This greatly improved the country's eating habits and reduced the frequency of famines.[65] Ekeblad also discovered a method of bleaching cotton textile and yarn with soap in 1751,[64] and of replacing the dangerous ingredients in cosmetics of the time by using potato flour in 1752.[65]

scientific revolution in France and to its acceptance in Europe.[67]

phlogiston. Paulze accompanied Lavoisier in his lab, making entries into lab notebooks and sketching diagrams of his experimental designs. The training she had received allowed her to accurately and precisely draw experimental apparatuses, which ultimately helped many of Lavoisier's contemporaries to understand his methods and results. Paulze translated various works about phlogiston into French. One of her most important translation was that of Richard Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids, which she both translated and critiqued, adding footnotes as she went along and pointing out errors in the chemistry made throughout the paper.[68] Paulze was instrumental in the 1789 publication of Lavoisier's Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which presented a unified view of chemistry as a field. This work proved pivotal in the progression of chemistry, as it presented the idea of conservation of mass as well as a list of elements and a new system for chemical nomenclature
. She also kept strict records of the procedures followed, lending validity to the findings Lavoisier published.

Science personified as a woman, illuminating nature with her light. Museum ticket from late eighteenth century.

The astronomer

Maria Kirch discovered a comet in the early 1700s, but is often overlooked because at the time, the discovery was attributed to her husband, Gottfried Kirch.[73]

Nineteenth century

Early nineteenth century

The Young Botanist, 1835

Science remained a largely amateur profession during the early part of the nineteenth century. Botany was considered a popular and fashionable activity, and one particularly suitable to women. In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was one of the most accessible areas of science for women in both England and North America.[74][75][76]

However, as the nineteenth century progressed, botany and other sciences became increasingly professionalized, and women were increasingly excluded. Women's contributions were limited by their exclusion from most formal scientific education, but began to be recognized through their occasional admittance into learned societies during this period.[76][74]

Scottish scientist

Mary Fairfax Somerville carried out experiments in magnetism, presenting a paper entitled 'The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum' to the Royal Society in 1826, the second woman to do so. She also wrote several mathematical, astronomical, physical and geographical texts, and was a strong advocate for women's education. In 1835, she and Caroline Herschel were the first two women elected as Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society.[77]

English mathematician

Luigi Menabrea's article on the engine, she foresaw wide applications for it as a general-purpose computer, including composing music. She has been credited as writing the first computer program, though this has been disputed.[78]

In Germany, institutes for "higher" education of women (

Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth was established in 1836 to instruct women in nursing. Elizabeth Fry visited the institute in 1840 and was inspired to found the London Institute of Nursing, and Florence Nightingale studied there in 1851.[80]

In the US, Maria Mitchell made her name by discovering a comet in 1847, but also contributed calculations to the Nautical Almanac produced by the United States Naval Observatory. She became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850.

Other notable female scientists during this period include:[15]

Late 19th century in western Europe

The latter part of the 19th century saw a rise in educational opportunities for women. Schools aiming to provide education for girls similar to that afforded to boys were founded in the UK, including the North London Collegiate School (1850), Cheltenham Ladies' College (1853) and the Girls' Public Day School Trust schools (from 1872). The first UK women's university college, Girton, was founded in 1869, and others soon followed: Newnham (1871) and Somerville (1879).

The Crimean War (1854–1856) contributed to establishing nursing as a profession, making Florence Nightingale a household name. A public subscription allowed Nightingale to establish a school of nursing in London in 1860, and schools following her principles were established throughout the UK.[80] Nightingale was also a pioneer in public health as well as a statistician.

Elizabeth Blackwell and others, Garret Anderson founded the first UK medical school to train women, the London School of Medicine for Women
, in 1874.

Annie Scott Dill Maunder

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin had declared.[81]

In Prussia women could go to university from 1894 and were allowed to receive a PhD. In 1908 all remaining restrictions for women were terminated.

Alphonse Rebière published a book in 1897, in France, entitled Les Femmes dans la science (Women in Science) which listed the contributions and publications of women in science.[82]

Other notable female scientists during this period include:[15][83]

Late nineteenth-century Russians

In the second half of the 19th century, a large proportion of the most successful women in the STEM fields were Russians. Although many women received advanced training in medicine in the 1870s,[84] in other fields women were barred and had to go to western Europe—mainly Switzerland—in order to pursue scientific studies. In her book about these "women of the [eighteen] sixties" (шестидесятницы), as they were called, Ann Hibner Koblitz writes:[85]: 11 

To a large extent, women's higher education in continental Europe was pioneered by this first generation of Russian women. They were the first students in Zürich, Heidelberg, Leipzig, and elsewhere. Theirs were the first doctorates in medicine, chemistry, mathematics, and biology.

Among the successful scientists were

Sofia Kovalevskaia (1850–1891), the first woman in 19th century Europe to receive a doctorate in mathematics and the first to become a university professor in any field.[85]

Late nineteenth century in the United States

Influential female scientists born in the 19th century: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie

In the later nineteenth century the rise of the women's college provided jobs for women scientists, and opportunities for education.

Women's colleges produced a disproportionate number of women who went on for PhDs in science. Many

coeducational colleges and universities also opened or started to admit women during this period; such institutions included just over 3000 women in 1875, by 1900 numbered almost 20,000.[83]

An example is

New York Infirmary for Women and Children
in 1857 and the first women's medical college in 1868, providing both training and clinical experience for women doctors. She also published several books on medical education for women.

In 1876, Elizabeth Bragg became the first woman to graduate with a civil engineering degree in the United States, from the University of California, Berkeley.[87]

Early twentieth century

Europe before World War II

Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel prize in 1903 (physics), went on to become a double Nobel prize winner in 1911, both for her work on radiation. She was the first person to win two Nobel prizes, a feat accomplished by only three others since then. She also was the first woman to teach at Sorbonne University in Paris.[88]

Alice Perry is understood to be the first woman to graduate with a degree in

Queen's College, Galway, Ireland.[89]

Fritz Strassman in Berlin, thereby demonstrating the occurrence of nuclear fission. The possibility that Fermi's bombardment of uranium with neutrons in 1934 had instead produced fission by breaking up the nucleus into lighter elements, had actually first been raised in print in 1934, by chemist Ida Noddack (co-discover of the element rhenium
), but this suggestion had been ignored at the time, as no group made a concerted effort to find any of these light radioactive fission products.

Froebelian lines and developed the principle that was also to inform her general educational program, which is the first the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect. Montessori introduced a teaching program that allowed defective children to read and write. She sought to teach skills not by having children repeatedly try it, but by developing exercises that prepare them.[91]

noetherian
is nowadays commonly used on many sorts of objects.

inner core.[94] Women such as Margaret Fountaine continued to contribute detailed observations and illustrations in botany, entomology, and related observational fields. Joan Beauchamp Procter, an outstanding herpetologist, was the first woman Curator of Reptiles for the Zoological Society of London at London Zoo
.

Florence Sabin was an American medical scientist. Sabin was the first woman faculty member at Johns Hopkins in 1902, and the first woman full-time professor there in 1917.[95] Her scientific and research experience is notable. Sabin published over 100 scientific papers and multiple books.[95]

United States before and during World War II

Women moved into science in significant numbers by 1900, helped by the women's colleges and by opportunities at some of the new universities. Margaret Rossiter's books Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 and Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action 1940–1972 provide an overview of this period, stressing the opportunities women found in separate women's work in science.[96][97]

Ellen Swallow Richards

In 1892,

American Home Economics Association, which published a journal, the Journal of Home Economics
, and hosted conferences. Home economics departments were formed at many colleges, especially at land grant institutions. In her work at MIT, Ellen Richards also introduced the first biology course in its history as well as the focus area of sanitary engineering.

Women also found opportunities in

child psychology
and to take jobs in clinical settings, such as hospitals and social welfare agencies.

In 1901, Annie Jump Cannon first noticed that it was a star's temperature that was the principal distinguishing feature among different spectra.[dubious ] This led to re-ordering of the ABC types by temperature instead of hydrogen absorption-line strength. Due to Cannon's work, most of the then-existing classes of stars were thrown out as redundant. Afterward, astronomy was left with the seven primary classes recognized today, in order: O, B, A, F, G, K, M;[100] that has since been extended.

Woman sitting at desk writing, with short hair, long-sleeved white blouse and vest
Henrietta Swan Leavitt made fundamental contributions to astronomy.[101]

Henrietta Swan Leavitt first published her study of variable stars in 1908. This discovery became known as the "period-luminosity relationship" of Cepheid variables.[102] Our picture of the universe was changed forever, largely because of Leavitt's discovery.

The accomplishments of Edwin Hubble, renowned American astronomer, were made possible by Leavitt's groundbreaking research and Leavitt's Law. "If Henrietta Leavitt had provided the key to determine the size of the cosmos, then it was Edwin Powell Hubble who inserted it in the lock and provided the observations that allowed it to be turned", wrote David H. and Matthew D.H. Clark in their book Measuring the Cosmos.[103]

Hubble often said that Leavitt deserved the Nobel for her work.

Swedish Academy of Sciences had begun paperwork on her nomination in 1924, only to learn that she had died of cancer three years earlier[105]
(the Nobel prize cannot be awarded posthumously).

In 1925, Harvard graduate student Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin demonstrated for the first time from existing evidence on the spectra of stars that stars were made up almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, one of the most fundamental theories in stellar astrophysics.[100][102]

Canadian-born

blood sugar
level, and kidney function.

World War II brought some new opportunities. The

B reactor from working. The adjustments made would quickly let the project resume its course.[106][107]

's physicists and engineers

Wu would later also confirm

Particle Physics, and the rapid development of the new field.[108]

Women in other disciplines looked for ways to apply their expertise to the war effort. Three nutritionists,

United States Bureau of Fisheries
, writing brochures to encourage Americans to consume a wider variety of fish and seafood. She also contributed to research to assist the Navy in developing techniques and equipment for submarine detection.

Women in psychology formed the

Japanese-American woman to contribute to the study, and Rosalie Hankey Wax
.

In the

Mina Spiegel Rees, also a mathematician, was the chief technical aide for the Applied Mathematics Panel of the National Defense Research Committee
.

Gerty Cori was a biochemist who discovered the mechanism by which glycogen, a derivative of glucose, is transformed in the muscles to form lactic acid, and is later reformed as a way to store energy. For this discovery she and her colleagues were awarded the Nobel prize in 1947, making her the third woman and the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. She was the first woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Cori is among several scientists whose works are commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp.[109]

Late 20th century to early 21st century

At the Saving the Web: The Ethics and Challenges of Preserving What's on the Internet at Room LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, at the Kluge Center, on 14, 15 and 16 June 2016, Dame Wendy Hall
At the Saving the Web: The Ethics and Challenges of Preserving What's on the Internet at Room LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, at the Kluge Center, on 14, 15 and 16 June 2016, Allison Hegel, a computer scientist and data scientist

Nina Byers notes that before 1976, fundamental contributions of women to physics were rarely acknowledged. Women worked unpaid or in positions lacking the status they deserved. That imbalance is gradually being redressed.[citation needed]

In the early 1980s, Margaret Rossiter presented two concepts for understanding the statistics behind women in science as well as the disadvantages women continued to suffer. She coined the terms "hierarchical segregation" and "territorial segregation." The former term describes the phenomenon in which the further one goes up the chain of command in the field, the smaller the presence of women. The latter describes the phenomenon in which women "cluster in scientific disciplines."[110]: 33–34 

A recent book titled Athena Unbound provides a life-course analysis (based on interviews and surveys) of women in science from early childhood interest, through university, graduate school and the academic workplace. The thesis of this book is that "Women face a special series of gender related barriers to entry and success in scientific careers that persist, despite recent advances".[111]

The

L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science were set up in 1998, with prizes alternating each year between the materials science and life sciences. One award is given for each geographical region of Africa and the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. By 2017, these awards had recognised almost 100 laureates from 30 countries. Two of the laureates have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, Ada Yonath (2008) and Elizabeth Blackburn
(2009). Fifteen promising young researchers also receive an International Rising Talent fellowship each year within this programme.

Europe after World War II

South-African born physicist and radiobiologist Tikvah Alper(1909–95), working in the UK, developed many fundamental insights into biological mechanisms, including the (negative) discovery that the infective agent in scrapie could not be a virus or other eukaryotic structure.

French virologist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS, for which she shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In July 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered evidence for the first known radio pulsar, which resulted in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for her supervisor. She was president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010.

Astrophysicist

Royal Greenwich Observatory
.

Mary Cartwright was a mathematician and student of G. H. Hardy. Her work on nonlinear differential equations was influential in the field of dynamical systems.

Watson and Crick
to conceive their model of the structure of DNA. Her photograph of DNA gave Watson and Crick a basis for their DNA research, and they were awarded the Nobel Prize without giving due credit to Franklin, who had died of cancer in 1958.

Jane Goodall is a British primatologist considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme.

Dorothy Hodgkin analyzed the molecular structure of complex chemicals by studying diffraction patterns caused by passing X-rays through crystals. She won the 1964 Nobel prize for chemistry for discovering the structure of vitamin B12, becoming the third woman to win the prize for chemistry.[112]

Frédéric Joliot for their work in radioactive isotopes leading to nuclear fission
. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.

Palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered the first skull of a fossil ape on Rusinga Island and also a noted robust Australopithecine.

Italian neurologist

Senator for Life
in the Italian Senate in 2001 and is the oldest Nobel laureate ever to have lived.

Zoologist

in vitro fertilization. She became the first female officer of the Royal Society
in 331 years.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for research on the genetic control of embryonic development. She also started the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation (Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Stiftung), to aid promising young female German scientists with children.

Sir Harold Jeffreys
.

United States after World War II