Women in Science

Women in Science (WIS), Sci-Illustrate Stories is an initiative of Sci-Illustrate. In this post we echo 45 of their beautiful illustrations¹ (many of them animated), summarising the main contributions of Women in Science who have changed the world, persevering for the sake of knowledge.

You can learn more about the story behind WIS in these videos:

Table of Contents

Women in Science Inspirations

June Almeida

June was a Scottish virologist & electron microscopist, and identified the first Coronavirus in the 1960’s.

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

French virologist, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for discovering HIV as the cause of AIDS.

Roberta Bondar

The world’s first neurologist in space, Dr. Roberta Bondar is globally recognized for her pioneering contributions to space medicine research, fine art photography and environment education.

Linda Buck

American Biologist who resolved the mystery of how the sense of smell works, by identifying the molecular circuit that connects an odor molecule (e.g. smell from a flower), to the receptors in the nose, to a distinct signal in the brain.

Dr. Eugenie Clark

Known as The Shark Lady, integral in changing the attitudes towards sharks, and women in ichtyology.

Gerty Cori

American biochemist who discovered how the body stores and utilizes energy, and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947.

Marie Maynard Daly

The first Black woman in America to earn a PhD in Chemistry whose research led to saving the lives of millions of people from heart attacks!

Dian Fossey

An American primatologist & conservationist who changed the course of preservation of the mountain gorillas.

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer who uncovered the structure of coal, viruses, and most famously the double helix structure of DNA.

Ida Freund

The first woman to become a university chemistry lecturer at a time when the subject was almost exclusively the domain of men.

Biruté Galdikas

A scientist, conservationist, & educator: Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas is the world’s foremost authority on the orangutans of Indonesian Borneo in their natural habitat.

Dr. Jane Goodall

A leading primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, a UN Messenger for Peace, & an inspiration for generations, accepted by both chimps & the scientific community.

Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton is a pioneering American computer scientist & software engineer who played a key role in writing NASA software that made moon landing possible!

Dorothy Hodgkin

British Biochemist who revolutionized the field of X-ray crystallography by using it to study the 3D structure of proteins. She discovered the crystal structures of Insulin, Penicillin, and Vitamin B12 and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.

Sofia Kovalevskaya

A brilliant Russian mathematician, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics in Europe, and the first female Professor of Mathematics in the world.

Barbara McClintock

An American cytogeneticist who discovered centromeres, telomeres, and transposons for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, becoming the only woman to win it unshared!

Ynés Mexia

Ynés Mexia was a renowned botanist and an intrepid explorer who cataloged and identified valuable plant specimens of North and South America.

Amalie Emmy Noether

A German mathematician behind the Noether’s Theorem, who framed modern physics and algebra, but was not fully appreciated by the scientific society of her time due to her gender.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard discovered how genes regulate the process of a single egg cell’s development into an entire animal. A question that had perplexed and fascinated scientists for ages! She was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this discovery.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

A British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who’s proposal that the stars are primarily made of hydrogen and helium was initially rejected, only to be proven correct later.

Marie Tharp

Marie was an American geologist and oceanic cartographer who made paradigm-shifting discovery by making detailed maps of the ocean floor.

Anna Wessels Williams

An American pathologist, a pioneer in infectious diseases and a public health advocate. She developed an effective treatment for diphtheria and a rapid diagnostic for rabies.

Flossie Wong-Staal

The first person to clone HIV leading to the development of blood tests & antiviral therapies saving millions of lives!

Inkcredible Women in Science

Mary Anning

Mary Anning was an English palaeontologist, whose findings contributed to redefine scientific theories about the (pre-)history of life on Earth.

Alice Augusta Ball

An Afro-American chemist and pharmacist who developed an effective and injectable treatment for leprosy (Hansen’s disease), her story long forgotten.

Laura Bassi

An extra-ordinary Italian 18th-century physicist: the first woman in Europe to be appointed professorship in a scientific field.

Martine Bertereau

A mining engineer, and the first female mineralogist ever recorded.

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) was an American biologist and writer, whose books became catalysts for advancing the global environmental movement.

Joan Clarke

Joan Clarke (Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray) was an English cryptanalyst, best known for her work on decrypting Nazi Germany’s secret communications during WWII: the Enigma Project.

Gertrude Elion

Gertrude was an American biochemist and pharmacologist who pioneered the field of rational drug design, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988.

Margherita Hack

Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist, scientific disseminator and icon of free thought.

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper

A Rear Admiral in the Navy and a pioneering computer scientist. She brought programming closer to English, developing an early compiler for a computer programming language.

Hypatia

A greek astronomer, philosopher and the earliest known female mathematician. Now a feminist icon.

Katherine Johnson

The African American mathematician (and probably the only person ever) who was considered to be more precise and reliable than computers.

Irene Joliot-Curie

A French radiochemist, a battlefield radiologist, feminist and pacifist. Irene was awarded —jointly with her husband— the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity, which revolutionised modern physics and medicine.

Hedy Lamarr

A stunning movie actress and an ingenious inventor. A woman praised for her sultry beauty but whose intelligence was consistently underestimated.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

One of the most tenacious scientists of the 20th century, Nobel Prize for NGF discovery.

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist, who gave the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission.

Maryam Mirzakhani

A prized Iranian mathematician, the first woman to receive a Fields Medal… and an artist, according to her daughter Anahita.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was a nurse, a social reformer, a statistician and a pioneer of information design.

Vera Rubin

Vera Rubin was an American astronomer whose work on galaxy rotation rates provided evidence for the existence of dark matter.

Nettie Stevens

The american geneticist who discovered that sex is determined by chromosomes. Her story is a tale of unflinching determination and purposefulness.

Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Tereshkova, Russian cosmonaut and engineer, is the first and youngest woman to have flown in space and the only one to have done this in a solo mission.

Youyou Tu

Known as the 3NOs² professor and because it must be very confusing to sing her the happy birthday song. Also, first Chinese female scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Artemisinin.

Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu —the First Lady of Physics— was a Chinese experimental physicist, whose work on beta decay and parity violation made seminal contributions to the field of nuclear physics.