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March is Women's History Month!

Famous Female Scientists

Help us celebrate these remarkable women that have changed the world with their research and scientific contributions.

Marie Curie

We all know the name of this physicist and chemist, but do you recall Marie Curie’s contributions to science? The Polish scientist studied at the Sorbonne, where she became the head of the physics lab there in the early 1900s — when women really did not teach science at European universities — and pioneered research in radioactivity. She and her husband jointly won the Nobel Prize in 1903.

Jane Goodall

The most famous primate scientist in history, Jane Goodall was renowned for her work with chimpanzees and as a champion of animal rights. And Goodall wasn’t just working in a lab; she climbed trees and mimicked the behavior of chimps in Tanzania to gain their trust and study them in their natural habitat.

Barbara McClintock

While studying botany at Cornell University in the 1920s, Barbara McClintock got her first taste of genetics and was hooked. As she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees and moved into postdoctoral work, she pioneered the study of genetics of maize (corn) cells.

Mae C. Jemison

Mae C. Jemison is the first African-American female astronaut. In 1992, she became the first black woman in space when as a crew member on the space ship Endeavour. Before entering the space program, she was a medical doctor who served with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Jennifer Doudna

Jennifer Doudna is one of the most culturally significant scientists studying today. She helped developed CRISPR, the genetic-engineering method that could allow for “designer babies” but also for the eradication or treatment of sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and HIV. She is a professor at UC Berkeley.

Rachel Carson

In the 1960s, one environmental scientist’s voice rose above the rest to become central to American politics, culture, and foreign policy: Rachel Carson’s. Her book, “Silent Spring,” warned of the dangers of pesticides and chemicals to humans, plants, and animals, and was a landmark in the nation’s environmental history.

Maria Goeppert Mayer

A German immigrant to the US who studied at Johns Hopkins during the Great Depression, Maria Goeppert Mayer, born in 1906, persisted in her studies even when no university would employ her and went onto become a chemical physicist. Her most famous contribution to modern physics is discovering the nuclear shell of the atomic nucleus, for which she won the Nobel Prize in 1963.

Sara Seager

By the time women were being trained as university scientists, the “solar system” had been pretty well-mapped. But Sara Seager, born in 1971, has discovered 715 planets in her time working with the Kepler Space Telescope, a remarkable contributor to the modern understanding of space.

Sau Lan Wu

Hong Kong scientist Sau Lan Wu is a particle physicist who warmed up her theatrical career by discovering charm quarks and gluons, and then really changed the entire course of scientific history by helping to discover the Higgs boson particle, which is still the subject of cutting-edge science today.

Tiera Guinn

This 21-year-old scientist hasn’t yet graduated from college, but Tiera Guinn’s already doing literal rocket science. The MIT senior is helping build a rocket for NASA that could be one of the biggest and most powerful ever made, according to WBRC News. She’s an aerospace major with a 5.0 GPA who also works as a Rocket Structural Design and Analysis Engineer for the Space Launch System that aerospace company Boeing is building for NASA.