Female Nobel Laureates of the 20th Century Quiz

Answer: Chemistry

The second woman to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry after her own mother, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Irčne Joliot-Curie ended up taking the prize alongside her husband as the two discovered the methods through which stable materials could be made radioactive (ie. induced radioactivity).

It's unsurprising that she followed in her parents' footsteps; the two ended up discovering radium and polonium. Irčne Joliot-Curie also died similar to her mother, becoming afflicted with cancer (leukemia specifically) due to her handling of Polonium-210-- an element that very much ran in the family.

Answer: Chemistry

British scientist Dorothy Hodgkin, who operated from major universities in the UK, became an integral figure in understanding structural biology, aiding in the development and further development of steroids, Vitamin B12, insulin, and penicillin. Though others created these over the course of the twentieth century, it was Hodgkin's work that better refined all of those important compounds, especially insulin, as the clearer structure of the hormone allowed scientists to mass produce it to treat diabetes.

Answer: Literature

The fourth female author to with the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pearl S. Buck claimed the award for her countless novels and biographical works, many of which focused their attention on life in China including, perhaps, her best-known work, "The Good Earth" (published in 1931 and made into a film in 1937). Buck, the daughter of Missionaries, was born and died in the United States, but spent a large majority of her early life in China (including during World War I).

She would be in the U.S. during the Great Depression, during which she would create her Pulitzer and Nobel award-winning body of work.

She passed away in 1973.

Answer: Literature

The author of "Beloved", "The Bluest Eye", and "Song of Solomon" (amongst others), Toni Morrison's works were known for capturing fictional American lives, especially black lives, in literature at its most poetic. Celebrated most in her later years, Morrison was the recipient of some of the U.S.' highest literary honours, eventually receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She would pass away in 2019, leaving behind one of the highest-regarded bibliographies of the later twentieth century.

Answer: Peace

The first female winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the second woman of all time to receive any Nobel honour, Von Suttner spent most of her life in the Austrian Empire, eventually passing away a mere week before the events which triggered the First World War. Nonetheless, her efforts to oppose war were significant as she, along with a handful of others, sought to organize conferences and bring together the world's greatest minds for discussions of peace and war.

It's believe that her efforts were instrumental in Alfred Nobel's decision to create a Peace Prize altogether.

Answer: Peace

U.S. Laureate Jody Williams came to prominence in the 1990s because of her role in coordinating the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, an organization founded throughout the decade and spurred on by years of dangerous humanitarian work she pursued in Central America. Eventually based in Geneva, Switzerland, the nonprofit she helped create not only aided in supporting the disarmament of landmines and cluster munitions, but also helped enforce rights and improved quality of life for victims of said weapons on an international scale.

Answer: Physics

Though Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize twice, this 1903 award was the first, presented to her and her husband, Pierre, for their work with radiation. Their second, again shared, would be for their discoveries of radium and polonium and in the field of Chemistry (won in 1911). Marie would, thus, become not only the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize altogether, but the first person to win two awards in different fields (the second being Linus Pauling, decades later). Marie passed away in 1934.

Answer: Physics

Besides Marie Curie, Maria Goeppert-Mayer was the only other woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics during the twentieth century, doing so sixty years after. She would be followed in 2018 by Canadian physicist Donna Strickland and U.S. astrophysicist Andrea M. Ghez in 2020.

Born in Germany but living part of her life in the U.S., Goeppert-Mayer's work involve physics on an atomic level; she contributed findings to the understanding of atomic absorption. Her long history in the field included work on the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Answer: Physiology or Medicine

The first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in her field, Gerty Theresa Cori was born in Prague but moved to the United States with her husband after World War I, assisting with him in the lab and aiding in work biological sciences despite general sentiments towards women in the field.

Their shared prize was given on account of their discovery of a process through which energy is made and stored in the body; their work in metabolic mechanisms led to the understanding of what would become known as the Cori ester, a molecule used in Glycogenolysis, regulating the body's use of glucose and insulin in liver and muscle tissues.

Answer: Physiology or Medicine

U.S. botanist and cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock was significantly active in her field from the 1920s all the way through to the 1950s and it was her works that formed the basis of understanding for the capabilities of genes in plant cells, specifically in maize.

Her works specifically involving transposable elements of DNA made her the first solo female recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (all the previous ones were shared). Though many didn't believe in the hypotheses her research posed following the Second World War, her efforts were celebrated in the decades to follow; she was highly-lauded for her work up until her passing in 1992.