The
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
s are five separate prizes that, according to
Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind."
As of 2022, 61 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 60 women. Unique Nobel Prize laureates include 894 men, 60 women, and 27 organizations.
The distribution of Nobel prizes awarded to women is as follows:
* eighteen women have won the Nobel Peace Prize (16.3% of 110 awarded);
* seventeen have won the Nobel Prize in Literature (14.28% of 119 awarded);
* twelve have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (5.3% of 225 awarded);
* eight have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (4.1% of 191 awarded);
* four have won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1.8% of 221 awarded);
* and two,
Elinor Ostrom and
Esther Duflo, have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2.17% of 92 awarded).
The first woman to win a Nobel Prize was
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband,
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie ( , ; 15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity, and radioactivity. In 1903, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie, and Henri Becqu ...
, and
Henri Becquerel.
Curie is also the first person and the only woman to have won multiple Nobel Prizes; in 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curie's daughter,
Irène Joliot-Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, making the two the only mother–daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes.
The most Nobel Prizes awarded to women in a single year was in 2009, when five women became laureates in four categories.
The most recent women to be awarded a Nobel Prize were
Annie Ernaux
Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux (; born 1 September 1940) is a French writer, professor of literature and Nobel laureate. Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology. Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize ...
in Literature and
Carolyn R. Bertozzi for Chemistry (2022),
Maria Ressa for Peace (2021),
Louise Glück
Louise Elisabeth Glück ( ; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". He ...
in Literature,
Andrea M. Ghez
Andrea Mia Ghez (born June 16, 1965) is an American astrophysicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her ...
in Physics,
Emmanuelle Charpentier and
Jennifer A. Doudna
Jennifer Anne Doudna (; born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a N ...
in Chemistry (2020),
Esther Duflo in Economics (2019),
Donna Strickland
Donna Theo Strickland (born 27 May 1959) is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped p ...
in Physics,
Frances Arnold
Frances Hamilton Arnold (born July 25, 1956) is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In ...
in Chemistry,
Nadia Murad for Peace, and
Olga Tokarczuk in Literature (2018).
Female laureates
See also
*
List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize ( sv, Nobelpriset) is a set of five different prizes that, according to its benefactor Alfred Nobel, in his 1895 will, must be awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”. ...
*
List of female nominators for the Nobel Prize
References
;General
*
;Specific
Further reading
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Female Nobel Laureates
Nobel
Nobel often refers to:
*Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1901, from the bequest of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
Nobel may also refer to:
Companies
*AkzoNobel, the result of the merger between Akzo and Nobel Industries in 1994
*Branobel, or ...
Female
Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gamet ...
Female
Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gamet ...
Nobel
Nobel often refers to:
*Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1901, from the bequest of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
Nobel may also refer to:
Companies
*AkzoNobel, the result of the merger between Akzo and Nobel Industries in 1994
*Branobel, or ...