Nobel Prize: First Woman To ...

1905 - Baroness Bertha Von Suttner
Honored for her writing and work opposing war
Author of Lay Down Your Arms

Bertha von Suttner was an Austrian noble woman, author and peace activist. Formerly a secretary for Alfred Nobel in Paris, von Suttner maintained an extensive correspondence with Nobel and was very critical of the military applications of dynamite. She worked very actively for the peace movement in Austria and Germany, chronicling her objections to war in a classic book, Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms) published in 1889. She also published a pacifist journal with the same name. Nine years after the death of Alfred Nobel, in 1905, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize. Von Suttner is depicted on the Austrian 2 euro coin and had been pictured on the old Austrian 1000 schilling bank note."

1909 - Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof
Honored in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof was a Swedish author and the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Known internationally for Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (a story for children, in the most common translation The Wonderful Adventures of Nils).

Selma was born with a hip injury, and an early sickness left her lame in both legs, although she later made a remarkable recovery. She was more serious and quiet than her siblings and other children her age as a result of her condition.

Lagerlöf worked as a country schoolteacher in Landskrona for nearly 10 years while honing her story-telling skills, with particular focus on the legends she had learned as a child. She began her first novel, The Story of Gösta Berling, while working as a teacher in Landskrona. Lagerlöf's other important works would later include The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Jerusalem, The Ring of the Löwenskölds, and The Treasure.

At the start of World War II, she sent her Nobel Prize medal and her gold medal from the Swedish Academy to the government of Finland to help them raise money to fight the Soviet Union. The Finnish government was so touched that it raised the necessary money by other means and returned her medal to her.

1903 - Marie Curie
Honored with her husband in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel

Marie Curie teamed up with her husband Pierre to conduct research on radioactive substances. They found that the uranium ore, or pitchblende, contained much more radioactivity than could be explained solely by the uranium content.

The Curie's began a search for the source of the radioactivity and discovered two highly radioactive elements, "radium" and "polonium." The Curie's won the 1903 Nobel prize for physics for their discovery. They shared the award with another French physicist, Antoine Henri Bacquerel, who had discovered natural radioactivity.

Marie Curie studied at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium.

1911 - Marie Curie
Honored in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element

Marie Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.

Throughout her life, Curie actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.

1947 - Gerty Theresa Cori
Honored with her husband for their study of the catalytic conversion of glycerin

Gerty Theresa Cori received the Doctorate in Medicine in 1920 from the Medical School of the German University of Prague. In 1922, she and her husband Carl immigrated to the United States to pursue medical research at the "State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases" (now the Roswell Park Cancer Institute) in Buffalo, New York.

While at Roswell they were discouraged from working together, but did so anyway, devoting their efforts to how energy is produced and transmitted in the human body. Specializing in biochemistry, they began studying how sugar glucose is metabolized. The Coris published fifty papers jointly while at Roswell, with either researcher's name appearing first, depending on who had done the bulk of the research for a given paper. Gerty Cori also published eleven articles as single author. In 1929, they proposed the theory that bears their name and later won them a Nobel Prize. The Cori cycle is their explanation for the movement of energy in the body - from muscle, to the liver, and back to muscle.

The Coris left Roswell after publishing their work on carbohydrate metabolism. A number of universities offered Carl a position but refused to hire Gerty. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1931, where Carl had been offered the chair of the pharmacology department at Washington University School of Medicine. Despite her research, Gerty was only offered a position as a research assistant. She was promoted to a full professor when Carl was made head of the biochemistry department in 1947, a post she held until her death in 1957.

2009 - Elinor Ostrom
Honored for her analysis of economic governance, especially demonstration of how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it. Shared the prize with Oliver E. Williamson.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Ostrom's 'research brought this topic from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention', "by showing how common resources - forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands, can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies". Ostrom's work in this regard, challenged conventional wisdom, showing that common resources can be successfully managed without privatization or government regulation.

First Woman To ...


Adventure & Exploration: First Woman To ...



Arts & Literature: First Woman To ...



Business: First Woman To ...

Nobel Prize: First Woman To ...



Politics: First Woman To ...



Science: First Woman To ...



Sports: First Woman To ...