This is a list of women chemists. It should include those who have been important to the development or practice of chemistry. Their research or application has made significant contributions in the area of basic or applied chemistry.
2009 – Ada E. Yonath - structure & function of the ribosome
1964 – Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin - protein crystallography
1935 – Irène Joliot-Curie - artificial radioactivity
1911 – Marie Sklodowska-Curie - discovery of radium & polonium
Four women have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (listed above), awarded annually since 1901 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Marie Curie was the first woman to receive the prize in 1911, which was her second Nobel Prize (she also won the prize in physics in 1903, along with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel - making her the only woman to be award two Nobel prizes). Her prize in chemistry was for her "discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie's daughter, became the second woman to be awarded this prize in 1935 for her discovery of artificial radioactivity. Dorothy Hodgkin won the prize in 1964 for the development of protein crystallography. Among her significant discoveries are the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12. Forty five years later, Ada Yonath shared the prize with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for the study of the structure and function of the ribosome.
2015 - Xie Yi (Asia-Pacific) - inorganic chemistry
2015 - Molly S. Shoichet (North America) - photochemistry
2011 - Faiza Al-Harafi (Africa/Arab States) - electrochemistry
Vera Bogdanovskaia (1868-1897), one of the first female Russian chemists
Ida Freund (1863-1914), first woman to be a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom
Louise Hammarström (1849–1917), Swedish mineral chemist, first formally trained female Swedish chemist
Edith Humphrey (1875–1978), inorganic chemist, probably the first British woman to gain a doctorate in chemistry
Julia Lermontova (1846-1919), Russian chemist, first Russian female doctorate in chemistry
Laura Linton (1853-1915), American chemist, teacher, & physician
Rachel Lloyd (1839-1900) - first American female to earn a doctorate in chemistry, first regularly admitted female member of the American Chemical Society, studied sugar beets
Muriel Wheldale Onslow (1880–1932), British biochemist
Marie Pasteur (1826–1910), French chemist and bacteriologist
Mary Engle Pennington (1872–1952), American chemist
Agnes Pockels (1862-1935), German chemist
Vera Popova (1867–1896), Russian chemist
Anna Sundström (1785–1871), Swedish chemist
Ellen Swallow Richards (1842–1911), American industrial and environmental chemist
Anna Volkova (1800–1876), Russian chemist
Nadezhda Olimpievna Ziber-Shumova (d. 1914), Russian chemist
Barbara Askins (1939-), American chemist
Alice Ball (1892-1916), American chemist
Astrid Cleve (1875–1968), Swedish chemist
Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867–1934), Polish-French chemist (pioneer in radiology, discovery of polonium and radium), Nobel prize in physics 1903 and Nobel prize in chemistry 1911
Gertrude B. Elion (1918–1999), American biochemist (Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988 for drug development)
Rosalind Franklin (1920–1957), British physical chemist and crystallographer
Ellen Gleditsch (1879–1968), Norwegian radiochemist
Anna J. Harrison (1912–1998), American organic chemist
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994), British crystallographer, Nobel prize in chemistry 1964
Clara Immerwahr (1870–1915), German chemist
Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956), French chemist and nuclear physicist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935
Stephanie Kwolek (1923–), American chemist, inventor of Kevlar
Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971), British crystallographer
Elizabeth Moran (? - ), British chemist and public analyst
Maud Menten (1879–1960), Canadian biochemist
Eva Philbin (1914–2005), Irish chemist
Darshan Ranganathan (1941-2001), Indian organic chemist
Mildred Rebstock (1919-2011), American pharmaceutical chemist
Sibyl Martha Rock (1909 – 1981), American pioneer in mass spectrometry and computing
Elizabeth Rona (1890 - 1981), Hungarian (naturalized American) nuclear chemist and polonium expert
Patsy Sherman (1930-2008), American chemist, co-inventor of Scotchgard
Margaret Stanley, British virologist
Ida Noddack Tacke (1896–1978), German chemist and physicist
Jean Thomas, British biochemist (chromatin)
Jean Youatt - Australian chemist, biochemist, microbiologist
Ada Yonath (1939–), Israeli crystallographer, Nobel prize in Chemistry 2009
Glaci Zancan (1935-2007), Brazilian biochemist, president of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of the Science (SBPC) from 1999-2003
