Science: Physics

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, a nuclear physicist who fought discrimination against women, ultimately became the second female professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tikvah Alper
Tikvah Alper was an outstanding radiobiologist who had to overcome many obstacles in her personal and professional life.

Hertha Ayrton
Hertha Ayrton was a distinguished British scientist who was the first woman to receive the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society for a scientific work that was exclusively her own. She was committed to suffrage activism and ensuring proper recognition of women’s scientific work.

Marietta Blau
Although she was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, Blau, being both female and Jewish, had no hope of a professional career.

Mildred Cohn

Sulamith Goldhaber
Sulamith Goldhaber and her husband, Gerson, studied for their Master's and doctoral degrees together, and then went on to become one of the most respected American teams in the art and science of nuclear emulsion technology.

Joyce Jacobson Kaufman
Inspired as a little girl by Marie Curie, Joyce Jacobson Kaufman has herself become one of the most distinguished international scientists in the fields of chemistry, physics, biomedicine, and supercomputers.

Hedwig Kohn
Born in Breslau, Hedwig Kohn was one of the early woman pioneers in physics. After a narrow escape from Nazi Germany, she went on to teach at Wellesley College and pursue independent research at Duke University in the field of flame spectroscopy, measuring absorption features of atomic species in flames.
Hilde Levi
Hilde Levi was an exceptional woman physicist who worked first in Germany and later in her new home country, Denmark, where she became a prominent researcher. She belonged to the second generation of women scientists in Germany, who were able to participate on a relatively equal basis in scientific institutions and in academia.

Lillian R. Lieber
Frustrated with the way math is taught in schools, Lillian R. Lieber created unconventional, popular books to excite young readers and incite their curiosity.
Lise Meitner
The dramatic splitting of the atom—“nuclear fission”—was a discovery which changed our world. Yet few know that it was a woman physicist who discovered the power of nuclear energy just after her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany.

Hélène Metzger
Hélène Metzger was a French historian of chemistry and philosopher of science, whose work has remained influential to this day.

Elsa Neumann
Elsa Neumann was the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from the University of Berlin. She became prominent in Berlin’s scientific community, carrying out research for the newly established airship industry. In 1900 Neumann established a highly successful association that gave grants to female students.

Mattie Rotenberg
Journalist, educator, homemaker, and community stalwart with a Ph.D. in physics, Mattie (née Levi) Rotenberg was born in Toronto to parents who had immigrated as teenagers when Jewish Toronto was a village with a population of barely 2000.
Science in Israel
In October 2003 the European Commission published She Figures, a survey on women in science and technology in member countries and associates (including Israel), which cited statistics and other data that provide a basis for measuring the degree of progress towards equality of the sexes in these spheres.

Ruth Sperling
Born into a family with a strong Zionist tradition and pioneer spirit, Ruth Sperling has kept this thread firmly woven through a life dedicated to scientific research. Ruth Sperling's most important scientific achievement was her co-discovery, with her husband, of the 3-D structure of spliceosomes, the cell's "machinery" for chopping up and re-attaching pieces of DNA to create its requisite assortment of functional proteins.

Olga Taussky-Todd
A self-proclaimed “torchbearer for matrix theory,” Olga Taussky-Todd made the previously little-known field essential for scientists and mathematicians.

Rosalyn Yalow
Rosalyn Yalow had two strikes against her in her effort to become a physicist: She was a Jew and a woman. She persevered, and not only earned a career in science and many awards—including a Nobel Prize—but changed the medical world with the introduction of radioimmunoassay.