List of female Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prizes 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." Additionally, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was established by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and awarded to a "person or persons in the field of economic sciences who have produced work of outstanding importance."

All Nobel Prizes won by women (1901–2023)

As of 2023, 65 Nobel Prizes and the Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to 64 women. Unique Nobel Prize laureates include 894 men, 64 women, and 27 organizations.

The distribution of Nobel prizes awarded to women is as follows:

• nineteen women have won the Nobel Peace Prize (16.3% of 110 awarded);
• eighteen have won the Nobel Prize in Literature (15% of 120 awarded);
• thirteen have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (5.6% of 230 awarded);
• eight have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (4.1% of 191 awarded);
• five have won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1.8% of 224 awarded);
• and three (Elinor Ostrom, Esther Duflo and Claudia Goldin) 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, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie, 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 and of Pierre and Irène Curie the only father-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes by the same occasion, whilst there are 6 father-son pairs who have won Nobel Prizes by comparison.

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 Han Kang in Literature (2024), Claudia Goldin in Economics, Narges Mohammadi for Peace, Anne L'Huillier in Physics and Katalin Karikó in Physiology or Medicine (2023), Annie Ernaux in Literature and Carolyn R. Bertozzi for Chemistry (2022), Maria Ressa for Peace (2021), Louise Glück in Literature, Andrea M. Ghez in Physics, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna in Chemistry (2020).

Female laureates

Physiology or Medicine

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	1947		Gerty Radnitz-Cori	15 August 1896 Prague, Austria-Hungary	26 October 1957 Glendale, Missouri, United States	""for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen." (shared with Carl Ferdinand Cori and Bernardo Houssay)
2	1977		Rosalyn Yalow	19 July 1921 New York City, New York, United States	30 May 2011 The Bronx, New York, United States	"for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones." (shared with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally)
3	1983		Barbara McClintock	16 June 1902 Hartford, Connecticut, United States	2 September 1992 Huntington, New York, United States	"for her discovery of mobile genetic elements."
4	1986		Rita Levi-Montalcini	22 April 1909 Turin, Kingdom of Italy	30 December 2012 Rome, Italy	"for their discoveries of growth factors." (shared with Stanley Cohen)
5	1988		Gertrude Belle Elion	23 January 1918 New York City, New York, United States	21 February 1999 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States	"for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment." (shared with James W. Black and George H. Hitchings)
6	1995		Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard	20 October 1942 Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Nazi Germany	—	"for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development." (shared with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus)
7	2004		Linda Buck	29 January 1947 Seattle, Washington, United States	—	"for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system" (shared with Richard Axel)
8	2008		Françoise Barré-Sinoussi	30 July 1947 Paris, French Fourth Republic	—	"for their discovery of HIV, human immunodeficiency virus." (shared with Harald zur Hausen and Luc Montagnier)
9	2009		Elizabeth Blackburn	26 November 1948 Hobart, Tasmania, Australia	—	"for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." (shared with Jack W. Szostak)
10			Carolyn Greider	15 April 1961 San Diego, California, United States	—
11	2014		May-Britt Moser	4 January 1963 Fosnavåg, Norway	—	"for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain." (shared with Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe)
12	2015		Tú Yōuyōu	30 December 1930 Ningbo, Zhejiang, Republic of China	—	"for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria." (shared with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura)
13	2023		Katalin Karikó	17 January 1955 Szolnok, Hungarian People's Republic	—	"for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19." (shared with Drew Weissman)

Physics

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	1903		Marie Skłodowska-Curie	7 November 1867 Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire	4 July 1934 Passy, Haute-Savoie, French Third Republic	"in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel" (shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel)
2	1963		Maria Göppert Mayer	28 June 1906 Katowice, Prussia, German Empire	20 February 1972 San Diego, California, United States	"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." (shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner)
3	2018		Donna Strickland	27 May 1959 Guelph, Ontario, Canada	—	"for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses." (shared with Gérard Mourou)
4	2020		Andrea Mia Ghez	16 June 1965 New York City, New York United States	—	"for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy." (shared with Reinhard Genzel)
5	2023		Anne L’Huillier	16 August 1958 Paris, French Fourth Republic	—	"for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter." (shared with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz)

Chemistry

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	1911		Marie Skłodowska-Curie	7 November 1867 Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire	4 July 1934 Passy, Haute-Savoie, French Third Republic	"for her discovery of radium and polonium"
2	1935		Irène Joliot-Curie	12 September 1897 Paris, French Third Republic	17 March 1957 Paris, French Fourth Republic	"for their synthesis of new radioactive elements" (shared with Frédéric Joliot-Curie)
3	1964		Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin	12 May 1910 Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt	29 July 1994 Ilmington, Warwickshire, United Kingdom	"for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances"
4	2009		Ada Yonath	22 June 1939 Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine	—	"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." (shared with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz)
5	2018		Frances Arnold	25 July 1956 Edgewood, Pennsylvania, United States	—	"for the directed evolution of enzymes" (shared with Gregory Winter and George Smith)
6	2020		Emmanuelle Charpentier	11 December 1968 Juvisy-sur-Orge, Essonne, France	—	"for the development of a method for genome editing."
7			Jennifer Doudna	19 February 1964 Washington, D.C. United States	—
8	2022		Carolyn Bertozzi	10 October 1966 Boston, Massachusetts, United States	—	"for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry." (shared with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless)

Literature

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	1909		Selma Lagerlöf	20 November 1858 Sunne, Värmland, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway	16 March 1940 Sunne, Värmland, Sweden	"in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."
2	1926		Grazia Deledda	27 September 1871 Nuoro, Sardinia, Kingdom of Italy	15 August 1936 Rome, Kingdom of Italy	"for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."
3	1928		Sigrid Undset	20 May 1882 Kalundborg, Zealand, Denmark	10 June 1949 Lillehammer, Norway	"principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages."
4	1938		Pearl Buck	26 June 1892 Hillsboro, West Virginia, United States	6 March 1973 Danby, Vermont, United States	"for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."
5	1945		Gabriela Mistral	7 April 1889 Vicuña, Chile	10 January 1957 Hempstead, New York, United States	"for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world."
6	1966		Nelly Sachs	10 December 1891 Berlin, German Empire	12 May 1970 Stockholm, Sweden	"for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength." (shared with Shmuel Yosef Agnon)
7	1991		Nadine Gordimer	20 November 1923 Springs, Gauteng, Union of South Africa	13 July 2014 Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa	"who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity."
8	1993		Toni Morrison	18 February 1931 Lorain, Ohio, United States	5 August 2019 New York City, New York, United States	"who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
9	1996		Wisława Szymborska	2 July 1923 Kórnik, Second Polish Republic	1 February 2012 Kraków, Poland	"for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
10	2004		Elfriede Jelinek	20 October 1946 Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria	—	"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."
11	2007		Doris Lessing	22 October 1919 Kermanshah, Guarded Domains of Iran	17 November 2013 London, United Kingdom	"that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."
12	2009		Herta Müller	17 August 1953 Nițchidorf, Romanian People's Republic	—	"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
13	2013		Alice Munro	10 July 1931 Wingham, Ontario, Canada	13 May 2024 Port Hope, Ontario, Canada	"master of the contemporary short story"
14	2015		Svetlana Alexievich	31 May 1948 Stanislav, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union	—	"for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
15	2018		Olga Tokarczuk	29 January 1962 Sulechów, Poland	—	"for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."
16	2020		Louise Glück	22 April 1943 New York City, New York, United States	13 October 2023 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States	"for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
17	2022		Annie Ernaux	1 September 1940 Lillebonne, Seine-Maritime, Military Administration in France	—	"for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."
18	2024		Han Kang	27 November 1970 Gwangju, South Korea	—	"for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."

Peace

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	1905		Bertha von Suttner	9 June 1843 Prague, Austrian Empire	21 June 1914 Vienna, Austria-Hungary	"for her audacity to oppose the horrors of war."
2	1931		Jane Addams	6 September 1860 Cedarville, Illinois, United States	21 May 1935 Chicago, Illinois, United States	"for their assiduous effort to revive the ideal of peace and to rekindle the spirit of peace in their own nation and in the whole of mankind." (shared with Nicholas Murray Butler)
3	1946		Emily Greene Balch	8 January 1867 Boston, Massachusetts, United States	9 January 1961 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States	"for her lifelong work for the cause of peace." (shared with John Raleigh Mott)
4	1976		Betty Williams	22 May 1943 Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom	17 March 2020 Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom	"for the courageous efforts in founding a movement to put an end to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland."
5			Mairead Maguire	27 January 1944 Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom	—
6	1979		Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (rel. name: Mother Teresa)	26 August 1910 Skopje, Ottoman Empire	5 September 1997 Kolkata, West Bengal, India	"for her work for bringing help to suffering humanity."
7	1982		Alva Myrdal	31 January 1902 Uppsala, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway	1 February 1986 Danderyd, Sweden	"for their work for disarmament and nuclear and weapon-free zones." (shared with Alfonso García Robles)
8	1991		Aung San Suu Kyi	19 June 1945 Yangon, State of Burma	—	"for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights."
9	1992		Rigoberta Menchú	9 January 1959 Laj Chimel, Quiché, Guatemala	—	"in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples."
10	1997		Jody Williams	9 October 1950 Rutland, Vermont, United States	—	"for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines." (shared with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines)
11	2003		Shirin Ebadi	21 June 1947 Hamadan, Imperial State of Iran	—	"for her efforts for democracy and human rights, focusing especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children."
12	2004		Wangarĩ Maathai	1 April 1940 Tetu, Nyeri, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya	25 September 2011 Nairobi, Kenya	"for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace."
13	2011		Ellen Johnson Sirleaf	29 October 1938 Monrovia, Liberia	—	"for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
14			Leymah Gbowee	1 February 1972 Monrovia, Liberia	—
15			Tawakkol Karman	7 February 1979 Shara'b As Salam, Taiz, Yemen Arab Republic	—
16	2014		Malala Yousafzai	12 July 1997 Mingora, Swat, Pakistan	—	"for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." (shared with Kailash Satyarthi)
17	2018		Nadia Murad	10 March 1993 Kocho, Iraqi Republic	—	"for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict." (shared with Denis Mukwege)
18	2021		Maria Ressa	2 October 1963 Manila, Philippines	—	"for their effort to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." (shared with Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov)
19	2023		Narges Mohammadi	21 April 1972 Zanjan, Imperial State of Iran	—	"for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all."

Economic Sciences

No.	Year	Portrait	Name	Born	Died	Rationale
1	2009		Elinor Ostrom	7 August 1933 Los Angeles, California, United States	12 June 2012 Bloomington, Indiana, United States	"for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." (shared with Oliver E. Williamson)
2	2019		Esther Duflo	25 October 1972 Paris, France	—	"for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." (shared with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer)
3	2023		Claudia Goldin	14 May 1946 New York City, New York, United States	—	"for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes"

See also

• List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize
• List of female Clarivate Citation laureates

References

Specific

General

• "Nobel Prize awarded women". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
• "Women - Nobel Prize laureates". nobelists.org. Retrieved 24 June 2024.

Further reading

• Sanchez, Chelsey (2 November 2021). "These Are the Four Women Who Won Nobel Prizes in 2020". Harper's Bazaar. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
• Alan Asaid (26 September 2009). "Så ratade Akademien kvinnorna" [How the Academy Rejected the Women]. SvD (in Swedish).