In receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the Philippine journalist Maria Ressa became only the 18th woman to be selected for the award in its 126-year history. With half the world made up of women, the obvious question arises: Why have so few been granted the committees’ most prestigious prize and, more broadly, been generally underrepresented across the Nobel Prizes? Addressing the criticism, the Nobel Foundation, which administers the prizes, in 2017 acknowledged its poor track record. “We are disappointed looking at the larger perspective that more women have not been awarded,” said Göran Hansson, vice chair of the foundation’s board of directors. “Part of it is that we go back in time to identify discoveries,” he said. “We have to wait until they have been verified and validated before we can award the prize. There was an even larger bias against women then. There were far fewer women scientists if you go back 20 or 30 years.” But he acknowledged other problems, including the way people are considered for prizes. Starting in 2018, he said, the committee would take steps to address the imbalance. “I hope that in five years or 10 years, we will see a very different situation,” he said. A total of 109 individuals have received the Nobel Peace Prize, which has also been awarded to organizations. The first woman to receive the prize was Bertha von Suttner, an Austrian writer who was a leading figure in a nascent pacifist movement in Europe. She was recognized in 1905, two years after Marie Curie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, in physics. It would be 26 years before another woman was selected for the award: the American Jane Addams, regarded as the founder of modern social work and an advocate for the concerns of children and mothers. She shared the 1931 prize with Nicholas Murray Butler, then the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2011, three women shared the award: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia; Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist from Liberia; and Tawakkol Karman, a journalist from Yemen who became the face of the “Arab Spring” uprising in her country. Here are the other women laureates, listed chronologically: 1946 — Emily Greene Balch, American economist, sociologist, pacifist and educator. 1976 — Betty Williams and Mearead Corrigan, founders of a Northern Ireland peace movement. 1982 — Alva Myrdal, Swedish diplomat and disarmament advocate. 1991 — Aung San Suu Kyi, pro-democracy activist in Myanmar. 1992 — Rigoberta Menchú Tum, leading advocate of Mayan rights and culture. 1997 — Jody Williams, American disarmament activist who campaigned to abolish land mines. 2018 — Nadia Murad, Yazidi activist from northern Iraq who escaped enslavement by the Islamic State and led campaign against sexual violence as a weapon of war. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting. Advertisements The first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature was Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden) who won the prize in 1909. Selma became a member of the Swedish Academy - the body that awards the prize, in 1909. All records listed on our website are current and up-to-date. For a full list of record titles, please use our Record Application Search. (You will need to register / login for access) Comments below may relate to previous holders of this record. AdvertisementsWhen it comes to record-setting Nobel Prize recipients, there’s Marie Curie and there’s everyone else. The Polish-French scientist was the first woman to share a Nobel Prize (the 1903 physics award, with her husband Pierre and fellow French scientist Henri Becquerel, for their pioneering work on radioactivity) and was also the first woman to receive an unshared Nobel, the 1911 chemistry prize, for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. That makes her the only person ever to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. As if that weren’t enough, four of her family members are also Nobel laureates. In addition to Pierre, her daughter and son-in-law shared the 1935 chemistry prize, while another son-in-law was the director of UNICEF when it won the 1965 peace prize. The first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau, who won in 1905. Von Sutter was the author of an influential anti-war novel and had a leading role in convincing dynamite magnate Alfred Nobel to include a peace prize in his bequest. The first female Nobel literature laureate was novelist Selma Lagerlöf, whose most popular book was about a boy who flies around Sweden on the back of a goose. The first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was Gerty Theresa Cori, who shared the 1947 award for discovering how sugar-derived glycogen is used by the body as an energy source. The last first woman to win the Nobel in her category was Elinor Ostrom, who shared the 2009 economics prize for her groundbreaking analysis of common property. The wait was so long for a woman economics laureate in part because that prize wasn’t established until 1969. In all, as of 2016, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 48 different women. Written by Kimberly Drake on March 19, 2021 Throughout history, female scientists have made groundbreaking discoveries that have contributed to the betterment of humankind. To celebrate Women’s History Month, this Special Feature looks at some of the most influential female scientists who never received a Nobel Prize for their work. Instead, the Prize landed in the hands of their male colleagues.
The Nobel Prize is a coveted honor granted to individuals in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature, and peace. The award goes to those who, by decree of Alfred Nobel in his will, “have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” A committee, which mostly comprises experts from the Karolinska Institutet in Solna, Sweden, selects the recipients of the award. Out of the six current members of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, only one is a woman — Prof. Gunilla Karlsson-Hedestam, who is a professor of immunology. In the Nobel Committee for Physics, the situation is similar: There is only one woman, Prof. Eva Olsson, among the six members. From the first Nobel Prize award in 1901 to the most recent in 2020, only 57 women have received this honor. This list of female laureates includes Marie Curie, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. Curie actually obtained the Prize twice, receiving it in Physics in 1903 and then in Chemistry in 1911. Many female scientists have made equally outstanding contributions that should have resulted in a Nobel Prize award, but they never became laureates. Instead, male colleagues took the credit and subsequently received the Nobel Prize. In other instances, Nobel committees perhaps overlooked these women’s accomplishments at the time. Who were these women who bestowed a great benefit on humankind yet, perhaps because of unfounded social inequities, never earned a Nobel Prize? Below is a comprehensive list of women in science who, in their lifetime, never became Nobel Prize laureates for their accomplishments. The year was 1906, and Lise Meitner became the second woman to obtain a doctorate from the University of Vienna. Soon after graduation, Meitner moved to Berlin to begin attending the lectures of German theoretical physicist Max Planck. She later began to work with German chemist Otto Hahn, investigating isotopes. This partnership led to a position at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1913. It was the collaboration with Hahn that led to the discovery of protactinium in 1917. However, Hitler’s rise to power abruptly interrupted her endeavors, forcing her to flee Nazi-controlled Germany in 1938 and head to Sweden without her possessions. Once established in Stockholm, the two scientists continued their work, which ultimately led to the development of nuclear technology. Although Hahn received the Nobel Prize for isolating atomic fission, Meitner was the one who described how the process occurred. This nuclear technology was the pathway to the Manhattan Project, which, interestingly, Meitner refused to be a part of, stating, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb.” Despite the Nobel Prize committee overlooking her work, Meitner garnered acknowledgment for her role in atomic fission when she and her colleagues accepted the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966. Chien-Shiung Wu was born in a small town near Shanghai, China. Her journey into physics began at a girl’s school that her father founded in the belief that all young women should have the opportunity to pursue an education. This progressive way of thinking was not commonplace at the time. Wu went on to major in physics at the University of Shanghai, and in 1940, she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1944, she joined the Manhattan Project, primarily focusing on radiation detectors. Wu furthered her career with a position at Columbia University, NY, where she immersed herself in the study of beta decay, a process of radioactive degeneration. As her skills and knowledge became known throughout the scientific community, Wu attracted the attention of theoretical physicists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. Also interested in radioactive technology, they had an unproven theory based on the idea that identical nuclear particles did not act similarly. The two scientists approached Wu to create an experiment that could prove this theory. Using radioactive cobalt at absolute zero temperatures, Wu proved their theory beyond doubt. Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize for this groundbreaking discovery in 1957. However, the two men failed to acknowledge Wu’s work on the project. Early on in her life, Rosalind Franklin had an affinity for science. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1941, then diverted from her studies to work at the British Coal Utilization Research Association. Here, she investigated the carbon and graphite microstructures that formed the basis of her Cambridge University doctorate in physical chemistry, which she earned in 1945. In 1951, her life would take yet another turn, this time into the study of DNA. As a research associate in John Randall’s laboratory at King’s College, London, Franklin met James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins, who were part of a separate research team. Using X-ray crystallography, an X-ray diffraction analysis technique that she had mastered, Franklin photographed DNA’s double-helical structure, which resulted in a picture dubbed “Photograph 51.” When Wilkins showed Watson one of her photographs, he immediately published it in the journal Nature. However, Watson did not mention his female colleague’s work in the article. Although her contributions were critical in understanding DNA structure, it was Watson, Crick, and Wilkins who garnered the Nobel Prize in 1962, after Franklin’s death from ovarian cancer in 1958. This complete disregard of Franklin’s work incited a proverbial war of memoirs. In his book, The Double Helix, Watson hinted at the existence of double standards in science. Conversely, the biography Rosalind Franklin and DNA, by author Anne Sayre, is critical of Watson’s account, describing “elements of double deceit” against Franklin. Despite the lack of respect that Franklin may have received from her peers, her legacy lives on at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago, IL. This college exists to foster the traits of inquiry, diligence, and academic excellence — all attributes that this educational institution’s namesake exemplified. After graduating from high school in the Bronx, NY, Esther Lederberg ultimately went on to Stanford University, where she obtained a master’s degree in genetics. In 1950, she discovered lambda phage, a virus that infects Escherichia coli. This finding opened a new pathway to understanding viruses, which is the basis of viral models to this day. Her later work involving genetics and immunology was in partnership with her husband, Joshua Lederberg. Their combined efforts resulted in the discovery that bacteria can exchange DNA and create a new strain. Even though their work was in tandem, her husband received the Nobel Prize for this breakthrough. According to an article in TIME, her husband vaguely acknowledged her contributions in his Nobel acceptance speech, saying that he had “enjoyed the companionship of many colleagues, above all my wife.” The same article points out that in a written remembrance to Esther, microbiologist and Stanford professor Stanley Falkow noted that her “independent seminal contributions in Joshua’s laboratory […] surely led, in part, to his Nobel Prize.” Although these women all left this world without the honor of a Nobel Prize, the scientific community will not forget their contributions. They lived and worked when inequality was the norm, overcoming a traditionally male-dominated discipline and forging a pathway for future women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
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