World War II and social changes

During World War II (1939–45), women undertook many roles that were previously exclusively male, including roles as scientific researchers. American crystallographer Isabella L. Karle developed processes to isolate plutonium chloride from impure plutonium oxide while working on the Manhattan Project. American mathematician Grace Murray Hopper worked for the U.S. Navy as one of the first computer programmers, and American biologist Rachel Carson worked for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (from 1940 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) as an aquatic biologist. In the postwar years many female wartime workers returned to the domestic sphere, unlike Hopper and Carson, who maintained their positions. However, the argument that women were mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit for scientific work, a notion that had persisted since ancient times, was no longer tenable. In addition, the notion that middle-class women should not continue to work once they were married, which had removed many qualified women from the scientific workforce, also began to lose credibility.

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Beginning in the 1960s, when the women’s movement in the 20th century was nearing its peak, women campaigned for, and finally won, equal rights in education and employment. The increasing availability of effective birth-control methods meant that women could plan their families along with their futures, and the dual-career family became the norm rather than the exception. These social changes, which affected women in all walks of life, had a major impact on their participation in higher education. Instead of a few women training to be teachers or nurses, female students in increasing numbers were now choosing careers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, as well as in law and business. Although women faculty grew slowly in number, their increasing presence provided inspiration for female students, enabling many to persevere. Some women researchers were recognized internationally for their contributions. For example, British crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and American geneticist Barbara McClintock made important discoveries that were duly recognized by the Nobel committees. (Hodgkin received the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and McClintock won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.)

For others recognition came belatedly and only after male colleagues had garnered the laurels. Austrian-born physicist Lise Meitner calculated the energy that would be released by splitting a uranium atom, but one of her colleagues, German chemist Otto Hahn, won the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery. Meitner and her other colleague, German physical chemist Fritz Strassmann, who also contributed to the discovery, were both later recognized with the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award, which they shared with Hahn. British scientist Rosalind Franklin took the critical X-ray image of DNA that enabled biochemists James Watson and Francis Crick to elucidate the double helix structure of the molecule. Franklin died before Watson and Crick received the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. British astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell identified regular pulses of radio waves in space and, with her thesis adviser, astrophysicist Antony Hewish, reported that the pulses were emitted by cosmic objects, which became known as pulsars. The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics went to Hewish and the head of the department, radio astronomer Sir Martin Ryle, who designed the radio telescope used by Burnell.

Women scientists in the 21st century

In the early 21st century in the United Kingdom and the United States, nearly 50 percent of medical degrees and doctorate degrees in the biomedical sciences were awarded to women. Undergraduate numbers in mathematics and in the physical sciences were approaching similar levels, and only in computing and engineering were women students still significantly underrepresented. This massive statistical shift took place in the context of a general increase in the number of women entering higher education, a product of the widespread movement toward gender equality and of campaigns to encourage girls and women to pursue their interests. Reaching the top tiers of scientific recognition, however, remained difficult for women. But this challenge was not unique to science—women in business and government faced similar difficulties.

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By 2001, a century after the presentation of the first Nobel Prizes, only 10 of the prestigious awards in the sciences had been bestowed upon women. But the first decade of the 21st century proved a watershed for women scientists. In 2009 alone three women captured the award—Australian-born American molecular biologist and biochemist Elizabeth H. Blackburn and American molecular biologist Carol Greider for Physiology or Medicine and Israeli protein crystallographer Ada Yonath for Chemistry—bringing, at the end of the decade, the total number of science Nobel Prizes awarded to women to 16. The Nobel for Physiology or Medicine was later awarded to Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser (2014) and Chinese scientist and phytochemist Tu Youyou (2015). The year 2018 was especially notable as Canadian physicist Donna Strickland became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics and American chemical engineer Frances Arnold became the fifth woman to receive the prize for Chemistry. The discoveries of these and other women and the broad recognition of their contributions to scientific progress marked what many hoped would be a promising turning point for women in science.

Women science Nobelists

Women science Nobelists by category

		name	year	country	achievement
Chemistry		Marie Curie	1911	France	discovery of radium and polonium; isolation of radium
		Irène Joliot-Curie	1935	France	discovery of new radioactive isotopes prepared artificially
		Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin	1964	United Kingdom	determining the structure of biochemical compounds essential in combating pernicious anemia
		Ada Yonath	2009	Israel	studies of the structure and function of the ribosome
		Frances Arnold	2018	U.S.	first directed evolution of enzymes
Physics		Marie Curie	1903	France	investigations of radiation phenomena discovered by Henri Becquerel
		Maria Goeppert Mayer	1963	United States	development of the shell nuclear model theory of the structure of atomic nuclei
		Donna Strickland	2018	Canada	invention of a method of generating high-intensity ultrashort optical impulses
Physiology or Medicine		Gerty Cori	1947	United States	discovery of how glycogen is catalytically converted
		Rosalyn S. Yalow	1977	United States	development of radioimmunoassay
		Barbara McClintock	1983	United States	discovery of mobile genetic elements (transposons) that affect heredity
		Rita Levi-Montalcini	1986	Italy	discovery of chemical agents that help regulate the growth of nerve cells
		Gertrude B. Elion	1988	United States	development of new classes of drugs for combating disease
		Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard	1995	Germany	identification of genes that control the body's early structural development
		Linda B. Buck	2004	United States	discovery of smell (olfactory) receptors and the organization of the olfactory system
		Françoise Barré-Sinoussi	2008	France	discovery of human immunodeficiency virus
		Elizabeth H. Blackburn	2009	United States	discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase
		Carol W. Greider	2009	United States	discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase
		May-Britt Moser	2014	Norway	discovery of grid cells in the brain and the elucidation of their role in animal navigation
		Tu Youyou	2015	China	isolation and study of qinghaosu, later known as artemisinin, one of the world's most-effective malaria-fighting drugs