Talk to the womenwho changed history.

1867–1934

Marie Curie

The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

1920–1958

Rosalind Franklin

Her X-ray photograph revealed the double helix structure of DNA.

1934–present

Jane Goodall

Transformed our understanding of primates — and of ourselves.

1956–present

Mae Jemison

First Black woman in space. Engineer, physician, dancer, teacher.

1964–present

Jennifer Doudna

Co-developed CRISPR-Cas9 — the gene-editing revolution that won the Nobel Prize.

1997–present

Malala Yousafzai

Survived an assassination attempt for speaking up. Never stopped.

1964–present

Michelle Obama

From the South Side of Chicago to the White House — by staying true to herself.

1940–2011

Wangari Maathai

Founded the Green Belt Movement. Planted 47 million trees. Changed Africa.

1909–2012

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Discovered nerve growth factor in secret — and kept researching past her 100th birthday.

1963–present

May-Britt Moser

Discovered grid cells — the brain's internal GPS system — and won the Nobel Prize.

1918–present

Brenda Milner

Her study of patient H.M. revealed how memory works — and founded an entire field.

1926–2017

Marian Diamond

Proved the brain can change throughout life — the discovery that launched the neuroplasticity revolution.

1930–present

Tu Youyou

Found a cure for malaria in ancient Chinese texts — and saved millions of lives.

1947–present

Linda Buck

Decoded the molecular logic of smell — revealing how we experience over a trillion scents.

1942–present

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Cracked the genetic code of body development — showing how a single cell becomes a complex organism.

1902–1992

Barbara McClintock

Discovered that genes jump — a revolutionary idea the scientific community took 30 years to accept.

1968–present

Emmanuelle Charpentier

Co-developed CRISPR-Cas9 — the molecular scissors that are rewriting the future of medicine.

1918–1999

Gertrude Elion

Developed drugs for leukemia, gout, and HIV — without ever getting a PhD.

1955–present

Katalin Karikó

Spent decades dismissed and demoted for believing in mRNA — then it saved the world.

1947–present

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Discovered HIV — giving medicine the knowledge it needed to fight the epidemic.

1907–1964

Rachel Carson

Started the modern environmental movement with a single, beautifully written book.

1948–present

Elizabeth Blackburn

Discovered telomerase — the enzyme that protects our chromosomes and shapes how we age.

1956–present

Frances Arnold

Invented directed evolution — letting nature design molecules better than humans can.

1966–present

Carolyn Bertozzi

Founded the field of bioorthogonal chemistry — letting us watch biology happen inside living cells.

1946–present

Mary-Claire King

Found BRCA1 — the breast cancer gene — and used DNA to reunite stolen children with their families.

1815–1852

Ada Lovelace

Wrote the world's first computer program — a century before computers existed.

1906–1992

Grace Hopper

Invented the compiler — and made it possible to program computers in English instead of zeros and ones.

1976–present

Fei-Fei Li

Built ImageNet — the dataset that taught machines to see and triggered the modern AI revolution.

1977–2017

Maryam Mirzakhani

First woman ever to win the Fields Medal — for drawing maps of impossible surfaces.

1918–2020

Katherine Johnson

Her calculations sent John Glenn into orbit — and her name was almost erased from history.

1912–1997

Chien-Shiung Wu

The 'First Lady of Physics' — whose experiment overturned a fundamental law of nature.

1955–present

Indra Nooyi

Ran one of the world's largest companies for twelve years — and reshaped what it could become.

1933–2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Won the right to be treated as an equal — one Supreme Court case at a time.

1975–present

Reshma Saujani

Built the movement to close the gender gap in computer science — and now in caregiving.

1950–2016

Zaha Hadid

Bent the geometry of buildings — and the rules of who gets to design them.

1938–2011

Lynn Margulis

Showed that complex cells were born from ancient partnerships between bacteria.

1935–present

Sylvia Earle

Walked untethered on the ocean floor — and has spent her life defending it.

1799–1847

Mary Anning

A working-class girl on a stormy cliff who helped prove that species go extinct.

1910–1994

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Mapped penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin — atom by atom.

1896–1957

Gerty Cori

The first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science — after years of being paid as an assistant.

1909–1974

Virginia Apgar

Her one-minute score has checked the health of nearly every baby born since 1952.

1942–2019

Patricia Bath

Invented a laser device for cataract surgery and fought blindness as a matter of justice.

1921–2011

Rosalyn Yalow

Invented radioimmunoassay — and refused to patent it so everyone could use it.

1878–1968

Lise Meitner

Explained nuclear fission — then watched the Nobel go to her collaborator alone.

1928–2016

Vera Rubin

Measured how galaxies spin — and found most of the universe is invisible.

1914–2000

Hedy Lamarr

A Hollywood star who co-invented the frequency-hopping idea behind modern wireless.

1883–1959

Edith Clarke

The first woman professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the U.S.