# The most important women scientists in history

The women who appear most in universities' and popular-science lists of great scientists, with their main contribution. In a New Scientist poll Marie Curie was voted the most influential woman in science, ahead of Rosalind Franklin.

- 5 votes · 15 items
- Feb 12, 2025 · sofia_noscope
- https://even.best/en/l/1100/the-most-important-women-scientists-in-history

## Top 15

1. **Rosalind Franklin** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — UK, 1920-1958. Her "Photo 51" (1952) revealed the double helix of DNA.
2. **Grace Hopper** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — US, 1906-1992. Programming pioneer behind the COBOL language.
3. **Chien-Shiung Wu** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — China and the US, 1912-1997. The Wu experiment showed that parity is not conserved.
4. **Ada Lovelace** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — UK, 1815-1852. Wrote the first algorithm intended for a machine, Babbage's engine.
5. **Hypatia of Alexandria** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Roman Egypt, c. 370-415. Mathematician, astronomer and philosopher.
6. **Emmy Noether** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Germany, 1882-1935. Noether's theorem, key to modern physics, and abstract algebra.
7. **Barbara McClintock** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — US, 1902-1992. Discovered "jumping genes"; Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1983.
8. **Dorothy Hodgkin** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — UK, 1910-1994. Structures of penicillin and vitamin B12; Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.
9. **Rachel Carson** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — US, 1907-1964. Silent Spring (1962), the spark of the environmental movement.
10. **Katherine Johnson** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — US, 1918-2020. Calculated the trajectories of NASA's first crewed flights.
11. **Vera Rubin** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — US, 1928-2016. Provided evidence of dark matter from the rotation of galaxies.
12. **Margarita Salas** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Spain, 1938-2019. Discovered the phi29 DNA polymerase, key to biotechnology.
13. **Mary Anning** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — UK, 1799-1847. Palaeontologist who found the first complete ichthyosaur known.
14. **Marie Curie** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Poland and France, 1867-1934. Discovered polonium and radium; the first person with Nobels in two different sciences (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911).
15. **Lise Meitner** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Austria, 1878-1968. Explained nuclear fission with Otto Frisch in 1938; meitnerium is named after her.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.