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List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#1401

Annie S. D. Maunder

Annie S. D. Maunder

1868 - 1947 (79 years)

Annie Scott Dill Maunder was an Irish-British astronomer, who recorded the first evidence of the movement of sunspot emergence from the poles toward the equator over the Sun's 11-year cycle. She was one of the leading astronomers of her time, but because of her gender, her contribution was often underplayed at the time. In 1916 she was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society, 21 years after being refused membership because of her gender.

#1402

Elisabeth Bardwell

1831 - 1899 (68 years)

Elisabeth Miller Bardwell was an American astronomer whose main area of study was meteor showers. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1866, and continued on at the college as an instructor until her death. During those 33 years, she taught a mixture of algebra, trigonometry, physics, and astronomy for the first twenty years, and eventually only astronomy after 1886. She also oversaw the development of the observatory at the college which included invited visits to the Washington, Princeton, Lick, Berlin, and Potsdam observatories. In November, 1891 she was elected a member of the Astr...

#1403

Phoebe Waterman Haas

Phoebe Waterman Haas

1882 - 1967 (85 years)

Phoebe Waterman Haas was one of the earliest American women to be awarded a doctorate in astronomy . While her formal professional career ended upon her marriage, she contributed as a citizen scientist, volunteering for the American Association of Variable Star Observers . The Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory was supported by donations from her family and is named in her honor.

#1404

Gladys Anslow

1892 - 1969 (77 years)

Gladys Amelia Anslow was an American physicist who spent her career at Smith College. She was the first woman to work with the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Anslow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to John Anslow and Ella Iola Leonard. Anslow attended Springfield Central High School and entered Smith College in 1909. While studying at Smith College, Anslow was a member of the Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the Physics Club. In her second year, Anslow elected a focus on physics under Frank Allan Waterman. Following her graduation with an A.B.

#1405

Mary Taylor Slow

1898 - 1984 (86 years)

Mary Taylor Slow was a British physicist who worked on the theory of radio waves and the application of differential equations to physics. She was the first woman to take up the study of radio as a profession.

#1406

Caroline Furness

Caroline Furness

1869 - 1936 (67 years)

Caroline Ellen Furness was an American astronomer who taught at Vassar College in the early twentieth century. She studied under Mary Watson Whitney at Vassar and was the first woman to earn a PhD in astronomy from Columbia.

#1407

Franziska Seidl

1892 - 1983 (91 years)

Franziska Seidl was an Austrian physicist. She was professor for experimental physics at the University of Vienna. One of her main research areas was ultrasound. Biography Franziska was born in Vienna to Franz and Maria Vicari, née Anton, who were proprietors of a small business. She attended primary and secondary school and received musical education. In 1911, she married Wenzel Seidl , a physics and mathematics teacher at a gymnasium in Hranice, Moravia. They lived in Hranice until Wenzel was conscripted in World War I, and died in 1916 at the Isonzo Front.

#1408

Pearl I. Young

1895 - 1968 (73 years)

Pearl I. Young became the first female technical employee of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics , which evolved to become today's NASA. She became Chief Technical Editor at NACA's Langley Instrument Research Laboratory, and an engineering professor.

#1409

Alexandra Glagoleva-Arkadieva

1884 - 1945 (61 years)

Alexandra Andreevna Glagoleva-Arkadieva was a Russian and Soviet physicist known for her research on medical imaging using X-rays, mechanisms for generating microwaves, and spectrometry in the far infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. She was the first Russian woman to become internationally known for her physics research.

#1410

Betty Louise Turtle

1941 - 1990 (49 years)

Betty Louise Turtle was an Australian astronomer and physicist. In 1971, with her colleague Paul Murdin, she identified the powerful X-ray source Cygnus X-1 as the first clear candidate for a black hole.

#1411

Alysia D. Marino

Alysia Diane Marino is an American experimental particle physicist. She is the Jesse L. Mitchell Endowed Chair at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2022, Marino was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "major contributions to understanding the physics of neutrino production and interactions, and for leadership in data analysis in the T2K and NA61/SHINE collaborations."

#1412

Anna McPherson

1901 - 1979 (78 years)

Anna Isobel McPherson was a Canadian physicist and the first female professor in the Department of Physics at McGill University. Early life and education McPherson received a B.A. degree in Mathematics and Physics with First Class Honors from McGill University in 1921. There she received the Anne Molson Gold Medal for excellence, awarded to the best student in physics, mathematics, and physical science at McGill.

#1413

Zinaida Aksentyeva

1900 - 1969 (69 years)

Zinaïda Mikolaïevna Aksentieva was a Ukrainian/Soviet astronomer and geophysicist. Life Aksentieva or Aksentyeva was born in Odessa in 1900. She graduated from Odessa Institute of Public Education in 1924. She worked on mapping gravity and her observatory was one of the first to be able to accurately find the centre of the earth. She worked in Poltava Observatory. She became the observatory director in 1951. Her areas of study were tidal deformation of the earth and gravimeter Earth profiles.

#1414

Florence Lewis

1877 - 1964 (87 years)

Florence Parthenia Lewis was an American mathematician and astronomer. Early life and education Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Lewis attended the University of Texas for her undergraduate degree, which she received in 1897, and Radcliffe College for a master's degree, which she received in 1906. She earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in astronomy and mathematics.

#1415

Bice Sechi-Zorn

1928 - 1984 (56 years)

Bice Sechi-Zorn was an Italian/American nuclear physicist, and professor at the University of Maryland. Life She graduated from University of Cagliari. She met her husband, Gus T. Zorn, at the University of Padua. They both worked at the University of Maryland. She was a professor of physics beginning from 1976 to 1984.

#1416

Mary Acworth Evershed

1867 - 1949 (82 years)

Mary Acworth Evershed was a British astronomer and scholar. Her work on Dante Alighieri was written under the pen name M.A. Orr. Early life Mary Acworth Orr was born to Lucy Acworth and Andrew Orr on 1 January 1867 at Plymouth Hoe. Her father was an officer in the Royal Artillery. Mary grew up in Wimborne and South Stoke in Somerset. Mary’s youngest brother was the colonial administrator Charles William James Orr.

#1417

Ruth J. Northcott

Ruth J. Northcott

1913 - 1969 (56 years)

Ruth Josephine Northcott was a Canadian astronomer based at the David Dunlap Observatory, and president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from 1962 to 1964. Asteroid 3670 Northcott is named for her.

#1418

Frida Palmer

1905 - 1966 (61 years)

Frida Palmér, was the first female Swedish astronomer with a doctorate. She studied variable stars. Early life Palmér was born on February 14, 1905, in Blentarp, Sweden, the only child to builder Hans Persson Palmér and his wife Elsa Jeppsson. Her father died when she was five years old and in 1910 Elsa moved to Järrestad. It is unclear how she finished her early education but she must have been somewhat self-taught as access to high school was not formally established for girls until 1928.

#1419

Wanda Leopold

1920 - 1977 (57 years)

Wanda Leopold was a Polish author, medical doctor, and social science activist known for her study of English writings beginning in West Africa, specifically Nigeria. A translator as well as a literary critic, she stressed the artistic qualities of creative writing. She was a scholar of Polish culture, literature, and language. Her book, "O literaturze Czarnej Afryki," was the first Polish introduction to African literature that was written in both English, and French. Some of her first critical essays were on Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, and Wole Soyinka.

#1420

Sophia Getzowa

1872 - 1946 (74 years)

Sophia Getzowa was a Belarusian-born pathologist and scientist in Mandatory Palestine. She grew up in a Jewish shtetl in Belarus and during her medical studies at the University of Bern, she became engaged to Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel. Together they worked in the Zionist movement. After a four-year romance, Weizmann broke off their engagement and Getzowa returned to her medical studies, graduating in 1904. She carried out widely cited research on the thyroid, identifying solid cell nests in 1907.

#1421

Enrica Calabresi

1891 - 1944 (53 years)

Enrica Calabresi was an Italian zoologist, herpetologist, and entomologist. Her family was part of the Jewish community which has played an important role in Ferrara, continuously since the Middle Ages.

#1422

Grace Langford

1871 - Present (155 years)

Grace Langford was an American physicist known for her work in physics education and research on the infrared reflection of phosphates. She taught at Wellesley College and at Barnard College. Early life and education Langford was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the seventh and youngest child of John Langford and Celestina Eldridge Langford. She graduated from Plymouth High School in 1889. She attended Wellesley College, where she was an instructor and undergraduate student simultaneously, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned her B.S. in physics in 1900, as the only woman in her graduating class.

#1423

Harriet Williams Bigelow

1870 - 1934 (64 years)

Harriet Williams Bigelow was an American instructor and astronomer. Born in Fayetteville, New York, Harriet was the daughter of pastor Dana Williams Bigelow and Katherine Huntington. Her family moved to Pitcher, New York, then in 1878 to Utica, New York where her father became pastor at the Memorial Presbyterian Church. Harriet attended the local public schools, graduating from Utica Free Academy in 1889. She matriculated to Smith College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she studied astronomy.

#1424

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt

1875 - Present (151 years)

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt was an Austrian physicist, who conducted research on radioactivity. Early life and education She was born Cäcilia Wendt on 4 May 1875 in Troppau, Silesia. She studied at the University of Vienna from 1896 to 1900, where she published work on rational values of trigonometric functions, receiving a doctoral degree for research on special functions of importance in mathematical physics.

#1425

Ruth Wheeler

1877 - 1948 (71 years)

Ruth Wheeler was an American chemist specialising in the field of nutrition and public education. Early life and education Ruth Wheeler was born on 5 August 1877 in Plains, Pennsylvania, to Jared Ward Wheeler and Martha Jane Wheeler . She was taught to read by her mother, and graduated from West Pittston High School in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Her thinking was influenced by her Welsh grandfather, Rev. Dr. Evan Benjamin Evans, a minister concerned with feeding the poor.

#1426

Angelina Cabras

1898 - 1993 (95 years)

Angelina Cabras was an Italian mathematician and physicist. She earned degrees in mathematics from the University of Turin in 1924 and in physics from the University of Cagliari in 1927. She obtained a position in mathematical physics at Cagliari, later moving to the institute of theoretical mechanics there. Her research concerned higher dimensional rigid body dynamics, the theory of relativity, and inductance.

#1427

Charlotte Moore Sitterly

1898 - 1990 (92 years)

Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly was an American astronomer. She is known for her extensive spectroscopic studies of the Sun and chemical elements. Her tables of data are known for their reliability and are still used regularly.

#1428

Lise Meitner

1878 - 1968 (90 years)

Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working on radioactivity at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin, she discovered the radioactive isotope protactinium-231 in 1917. In 1938, Meitner and her nephew, the physicist Otto Robert Frisch, discovered nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie".

#1429

Maria Goeppert Mayer

Maria Goeppert Mayer

1906 - 1972 (66 years)

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being Marie Curie. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.

#1430

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin

1920 - 1958 (38 years)

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA , RNA , viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".

#1431

Frances Woodworth Wright

Frances Woodworth Wright

1897 - 1989 (92 years)

Frances Woodworth Wright was an American astronomer based at Harvard University. During World War II, she taught celestial navigation to military officers and engineers. Early life Frances Woodworth Wright was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of George William Wright and Nellie Woodworth Wright. As a child in 1907, Wright wrote a short essay titled "My Favorite Poem", for the popular national children's magazine St. Nicholas. She earned a bachelor's degree at Brown University in 1920. She was granted a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College in 1958, as a student of Fred Whipp...

#1432

Maud Worcester Makemson

1891 - 1977 (86 years)

Maud Worcester Makemson was an American astronomer, a specialist on archaeoastronomy, and director of Vassar Observatory. Early life and education Maud Lavon Worcester was born in 1891 in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. She attended Girls' Latin School in Boston. She briefly attended Radcliffe College, but left to teach school. In 1911, her family moved to Pasadena, California. She was working as a journalist in Bisbee, Arizona when she took an interest in astronomy. She returned to California and taught school while taking correspondence courses and summer classes to qualify for admission to the University of California.

#1433

Elizabeth Laird

1874 - 1969 (95 years)

Elizabeth Rebecca Laird was a Canadian physicist who chaired the physics department at Mount Holyoke College for nearly four decades. She was the first woman accepted by Sir J. J. Thomson to conduct research at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. In her later life she studied electromagnetic radiation for military and medical applications.

#1434

Beryl May Dent

1900 - 1977 (77 years)

Beryl May Dent was an English mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the University of Bristol with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student a...

#1435

Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander

1908 - 1958 (50 years)

Frances Elizabeth Somerville Alexander was a British geologist, academic, and physicist, whose wartime work with radar and radio led to early developments in radio astronomy and whose post-war work on the geology of Singapore is considered a significant foundation to contemporary research. Alexander earned her PhD from Newnham College, Cambridge, and worked in Radio Direction Finding at Singapore Naval Base from 1938 to 1941. In January 1941, unable to return to Singapore from New Zealand, she became Head of Operations Research in New Zealand's Radio Development Lab, Wellington. In 1945, Alex...

#1436

Margaretta Palmer

1862 - 1924 (62 years)

Margaretta Palmer was an American astronomer, one of the first women to earn a doctorate in astronomy. She worked at the Yale University Observatory at a time when woman were frequently hired as assistant astronomers, but when most of these women had only a high school education, so Palmer's advanced degree made her unusual for her time.

#1437

Julie Vinter Hansen

Julie Vinter Hansen

1890 - 1960 (70 years)

Julie Marie Vinter Hansen was a Danish astronomer. Life Early life Vinter Hansen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Education While studying at the University of Copenhagen, she was appointed a computer at the University's observatory in 1915. In the pre-electronic era, computers were humans that worked doing hand calculations at the direction of astronomers. She was the first woman to hold an appointment at the University. She was later appointed observatory assistant and, in 1922, observer.

#1438

Sarah Frances Whiting

Sarah Frances Whiting

1847 - 1927 (80 years)

Sarah Frances Whiting was an American physicist and astronomer. She was one of the founders and the first director of the Whitin Observatory at Wellesley College. She instructed several notable astronomers and physicists, including Annie Jump Cannon.

#1439

Louise Sherwood McDowell

Louise Sherwood McDowell

1876 - 1966 (90 years)

Louise Sherwood McDowell was an American physicist and educator. She spent most of her career as a professor of physics at Wellesley College and is best known for being one of the first female scientists to work at the United States Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

#1440

Ida Barney

1886 - 1982 (96 years)

Ida Barney was an American astronomer, best known for her 22 volumes of astrometric measurements on 150,000 stars. She was educated at Smith College and Yale University and spent most of her career at the Yale University Observatory. She was the 1952 recipient of the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy.

#1441

Marie Curie

1867 - 1934 (67 years)

Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie , known simply as Marie Curie , was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University o...

#1442

Hertha Wambacher

1903 - 1950 (47 years)

Hertha Wambacher was an Austrian physicist. Education After having obtained the general certificate of education from the girls' high school run by the Association for the Extended Education of Women in 1922, she studied first chemistry, then physics at the University of Vienna.

#1443

Maria Pogonowska

1897 - 2009 (112 years)

Maria Pogonowska was a Polish-Israeli scientist of Jewish origin. She was a doctor of physics. Biography Maria Asterblum was born in Warsaw. Her father was Maurycy, a lawyer and her mother Salomea. In 1915, she entered the Warsaw University, newly opened after the Russians left Warsaw, studying physics. She was one of only four women admitted in the first year of studies. In 1924, she became the first doctor promoted by the Department of Physics; her doctoral advisor was Stefan Pieńkowski. She worked as a senior assistant at the Department of Experimental Physics at Warsaw University and has ...

#1444

Elisabeth Rotten

1882 - 1964 (82 years)

Elisabeth Friederike Rotten was a Quaker peace activist and educational progressive. Life As daughter to the Swiss couple Moritz and Luise Rotten, she attended the "höhere Mädchenschule Luisenschule" during 1888-1898, later studying at the Victoria-Lyzeum Berlin from 1904. In September 1906 she took the Reifeprüfung at the Kaiserin Augusta-Gymnasium Charlottenburg. She graduated in her studies in philosophy and German language and literature in Heidelberg, Berlin, Marburg and Montpellier. In Marburg she met with Hermann Lietz and Gustav Wyneken, which was vital to the future development of her thinking.

#1445

Gladys Mackenzie

1903 - 1972 (69 years)

Gladys Isabel Harper was a Scottish physicist who studied X-rays. She taught physics at Newnham College, Cambridge and was a research fellow of the University of Bristol. She conducted research in X-ray physics, focusing on topics such as alpha particles, X-ray monochromatization, and spectroscopy. Her research of alpha particles proved that the theory of Gaunt can also be applied to molecular hydrogen. She also developed through her research of crystal and slit systems a quantitative general theory for analysis of composite radiation and production of monochromatic beams. She attended the University of Edinburgh and graduated with an MA and BSc in mathematics and natural philosophy.

#1446

Isabelle Stone

1868 - 1966 (98 years)

Isabelle Stone was an American physicist and educator. She was one of the founders of the American Physical Society. She was among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States. Early life and education Stone was born in 1868 to Harriet H. Leonard Stone and Leander Stone in Chicago. She completed a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1890, and was among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States, earning hers just two years after Caroline Willard Baldwin earned a Doctor of Science at Cornell University. Stone completed doctoral work at the University of Chicago.

#1447

Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz

Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz

1885 - 1973 (88 years)

Geertruida Luberta de Haas-Lorentz was a Dutch physicist and the first to perform fluctuational analysis of electrons as Brownian particles. Consequently she is considered to be the first woman to work in electrical noise theory.

#1448

Édmée Chandon

1885 - 1944 (59 years)

Édmée Marie Juliette Chandon was an astronomer known for being the first professional female astronomer in France. She worked at the Paris Observatory from 1908 until her retirement in 1941. Biography The eldest of five children, Chandon was born to Marie Duhan and merchant François Chandon on 21 November 1885 in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. In July 1906, she completed her degree in Mathematical Sciences at the Faculté des sciences de Paris. She began working at the Paris Observatory in November 1908 as a trainee, where she met Jacques Jean Trousset after he joined her team in January 1909.

#1449

Ruth Stokes

1890 - 1968 (78 years)

Ruth Wyckliffe Stokes was an American mathematician, cryptologist, and astronomer. She earned the first doctorate in mathematics from Duke University, made pioneering contributions to the theory of linear programming, and founded the Pi Mu Epsilon journal.

#1450

Fanny Gates

1872 - 1931 (59 years)

Fanny Cook Gates was an American physicist, an American Physical Society fellow and American Mathematical Society member. She made contributions to the research of radioactive materials, determining that radioactivity could not be destroyed by heat or ionization due to chemical reactions, and that radioactive materials differ from phosphorescent materials both qualitatively and quantitatively. More specifically, Gates showed that the emission of blue light from quinine was temperature dependent, providing evidence that the emitted light is produced from phosphorescence rather than radioactive decay.

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