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List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#1451

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.

#1452

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.

#1453

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.

#1454

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.

#1455

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.

#1456

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.

#1457

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.

#1458

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.

#1459

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.

#1460

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.

#1461

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.

#1462

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.

#1463

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.

#1464

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.

#1465

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider

1891 - 1990 (99 years)

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider was a German-Australian physicist and philosopher. She is best known for her collaboration and correspondence with physicists Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Max Planck. Rosenthal-Schneider earned a PhD in philosophy in 1920 at the University of Berlin, where she first met Albert Einstein. After leaving Nazi Germany and emigrating to Australia in 1938, she became a tutor in the German department at the University of Sydney in 1945 and taught history and philosophy of science. In the 1940s and 1950s, she exchanged a series of letters with Albert Einstein about philo...

#1466

Jane Dewey

1900 - 1976 (76 years)

Jane Mary Dewey was an American physicist. Early life and education Jane Mary Dewey was born in Chicago, the daughter of philosopher John Dewey and educator Alice Chipman Dewey. Her parents named her in honor of Jane Addams, an activist, sociologist and reformer; and Mary Rozet Smith, a philanthropist who was Addams's longtime companion.

#1467

Nadiashda Galli-Shohat

1879 - 1948 (69 years)

Nadiashda or Nadejda Galli-Shohat was a Russian physicist. Born Nadiashda Kokaoulina in Siberia, she graduated from the Women's University of Petrograd in 1903, joined the Bolshevik Party after the 1905 Russian Revolution, and took the name Galli upon marrying her first husband. She received her doctorate from Göttingen in 1914, worked at the Yekaterinburg Meteorological Observatory from 1915 to 1917, and from 1917 to 1922 was professor and chair of the physics department at Ural Federal University, after which she worked at the University of Petrograd's State Optical Institute. Together with...

#1468

Frances Pleasonton

Frances Pleasonton

1912 - 1990 (78 years)

Frances Pleasonton was a Particle Physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She was an active teacher and researcher, and a member of the team who first demonstrated neutron decay in 1951. Early life and education Pleasonton earned her bachelor's degree at Bryn Mawr College. She was an editor of the Bryn Mawr College yearbook. She went on to teach at Winsor School, Girls Latin School of Chicago and Brearley School. She returned to Bryn Mawr College for her master's degree, working as a warden at Pembroke East, and graduated in 1943. She was demonstrator-elect in physics and took a leave of absence for government service in 1942.

#1469

Leona Woods

1919 - 1986 (67 years)

Leona Harriet Woods , later known as Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb. At age 23, she was the youngest and only female member of the team which built and experimented with the world's first nuclear reactor , Chicago Pile-1, in a project led by her mentor Enrico Fermi. In particular, Woods was instrumental in the construction and then utilization of geiger counters for analysis during experimentation. She was the only woman present when the reactor went critical. She worked with Fe...

#1470

Katharina Boll-Dornberger

1909 - 1981 (72 years)

Katharina Boll-Dornberger , also known as Käte Dornberger-Schiff, was an Austrian-German physicist and crystallographer. She is known for her work on order-disorder structures. Life Katharina Boll-Dornberger was born in Vienna in 1909 as the daughter of the university professor and Alice Friederike Schiff. She studied physics and mathematics in Vienna and Göttingen. She wrote her dissertation under supervision of V. M. Goldschmidt on the crystal structure of water-free zinc sulfate in Göttingen and handed it in in Vienna in 1934. Afterwards, she conducted research in Philipp Gross's lab in Vienna.

#1471

Beatrice Tinsley

Beatrice Tinsley

1941 - 1981 (40 years)

Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley was a British-born New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist, and the first female professor of astronomy at Yale University, whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve, grow and die.

#1472

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.

#1473

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...

#1474

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.

#1475

Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil

Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil

Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil is a Turkish-American astrophysicist, and Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. She formerly served as a National Science Foundation and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. Her research led to a discovery of an extremely rare galaxy with a unique double-ringed elliptical structure, which is now commonly referred to as Burcin's Galaxy. She was also a 2018 TED Fellow, and a 2020 TED Senior Fellow.

#1476

Priscilla Fairfield Bok

1896 - 1975 (79 years)

Priscilla Fairfield Bok was an American astronomer and the wife of Dutch-born astronomer Bart Bok, Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia and later of Steward Observatory in Arizona, US. Their harmonious marriage accompanied the four decades of their close scientific collaboration, in which "it is difficult and pointless to separate his achievements from hers". They co-authored a number of academic papers on star clusters, stellar magnitudess, and the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. The Boks displayed great mutual enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public: described as ...

#1477

Anne Sewell Young

Anne Sewell Young

1871 - 1961 (90 years)

Anne Sewell Young was an American astronomer. She was an astronomy professor at Mount Holyoke College for 37 years. Biography Anne Sewell Young was born in Bloomington, Wisconsin on January 2, 1871, to Reverend Albert Adams Young and Mary Sewell.

#1478

Elsa Neumann

1872 - 1902 (30 years)

Elsa Neumann was a German physicist. She was the first woman to receive a PhD in physics from the University of Berlin, in 1899. Early life and education Elsa was the daughter of Maximilian and Anna née Meyer, an older brother was the ornithologist Oscar Neumann while a sister Alice was a sculptor. As a woman, Elsa Neumann was generally denied access to higher education. In 1890 she graduated with a Lehrerinnenprüfung , a degree that did not require higher education at that time and was considered less than a Realgymnasium education. Thus she took private lessons with various professors in order to acquire the advanced knowledge and skills necessary for university-level studies.

#1479

Wang Zhenyi

1768 - 1797 (29 years)

Wang Zhenyi was a Chinese scientist from the Qing dynasty. She breached the feudal customs of the time, which hindered women's rights, by working to educate herself in subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, geography, and medicine. She was well known for her contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. She was an acclaimed scholar: "An extraordinary woman of 18th century China."

#1480

Frances Wick

1875 - 1941 (66 years)

Frances Gertrude Wick was an American physicist known for her studies on luminescence. Early life and education Wick was born on October 2, 1875, in Butler, Pennsylvania. Her father, Alfred Wick, was an oil producer, an innkeeper, and a store clerk. Together he and her mother, Sarah, had seven children. Wick earned her Bachelor's from Wilson College in 1897. After graduation Wick began teaching at the high school she had attended as a student. When preparing to teach a physics class, Wick became interested in physics. In 1904, she decided to leave her job teaching to study physics at Co...

#1481

Nina Vedeneyeva

Nina Vedeneyeva

1882 - 1955 (73 years)

Nina Yevgenyevna Vedeneyeva was a physicist involved in the study of mineral crystals and their coloration. Heading numerous departments at such institutions as the All-USSR Institute of Mineral Resources, the Institute of Geological Sciences and the Institute of Crystallography, she conducted research into color variants of clay minerals and classifying clays which occurred in organic dyes. She was noted for development and design of instruments to improve the methods of optical crystallography. She was the last partner-muse of the poet Sophia Parnok and was awarded the Stalin Prize and Orde...

#1482

Rose Mooney-Slater

1902 - 1981 (79 years)

Rose Camille LeDieu Mooney-Slater was a professor of physics at the Newcomb College of the Tulane University and the first female X-ray crystallographer in the United States. Life Rose Camille LeDieu was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mooney-Slater received a B.S. and M.S. in physics from the Newcomb College of the Tulane University in 1926 and 1929, respectively. In 1932, she received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago.

#1483

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.

#1484

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.

#1485

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.

#1486

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.

#1487

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.

#1488

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.

#1489

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."

#1490

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.

#1491

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.

#1492

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".

#1493

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...

#1494

Frances Lowater

1871 - 1956 (85 years)

Frances Lowater was a British-American physicist and astronomer. Life and career Lowater studied in England for her undergraduate degrees, at University College, Nottingham, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She then moved to the United States, where she attended Bryn Mawr College and earned her Ph.D. in 1906. While studying for her Ph.D., she took a position as a physics demonstrator, and remained in that position until 1910. She spent a year at Westfield College and four years at Rockford College, then moved to Wellesley College, where she spent the rest of her career; with the exception of a...

#1495

Valerie Myerscough

1942 - 1980 (38 years)

Valerie Patricia Myerscough was a British mathematician and astrophysicist remembered for her precocious talent and great contributions to a range of astrophysical applications, as well as to the evolution of the Royal Astronomical Society, in a very short life.

#1496

Gerta von Ubisch

1882 - 1965 (83 years)

Gerta von Ubisch was a German physicist, geneticist, and botanist. She studied barley and found a genetic explanation for heterostyly. In 1933 she lost her position at Heidelberg University because of her Jewish heritage.

#1497

Vibert Douglas

1894 - 1988 (94 years)

Allie Vibert Douglas, , who usually went by her middle name, was a Canadian astronomer and astrophysicist. Life Douglas was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 15 December 1894. Because both of Douglas' parents died the year she was born, she first lived in London, England with her brother George Vibert Douglas, and her grandmother. Douglas' grandfather was Rev. George Douglas, a prominent Methodist minister and educator. In 1904 both Douglas and her brother returned to Montreal where they attended Westmount High School. Growing up, Douglas was interested in science but felt that her gender was a handicap.

#1498

Alice Hall Farnsworth

Alice Hall Farnsworth

1893 - 1960 (67 years)

Alice Hall Farnsworth was an American astronomer. She was director of John Payson Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College from 1936 until her retirement in 1957. Early life Alice Hall Farnsworth was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, the youngest of four children of Frederick Tudor Farnsworth and Anna Caroline Tufts Farnsworth. As a child, she was an active reader of St. Nicholas magazine, submitting contest entries and winning prizes.

#1499

Henrietta Hill Swope

1902 - 1980 (78 years)

Henrietta Hill Swope was an American astronomer who studied variable stars. In particular, she measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars, which are bright variable stars whose periods of variability relate directly to their intrinsic luminosities. Their measured periods can therefore be related to their distances and used to measure the size of the Milky Way and distances to other galaxies.

#1500

Mildred Allen

1894 - 1990 (96 years)

Mildred Allen was an American physicist. Biography Early life and education Mildred Allen was born in Sharon, Massachusetts to MIT professor C. Frank Allen and Caroline Hadley Allen. She had one younger sister, Margaret Allen Anderson.

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