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."
As of 2023, 65 Nobel Prizes and the Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to 64 women.[1] Unique Nobel Prize laureates include 894 men, 64 women, and 27 organizations.[2]
The distribution of Nobel prizes awarded to women is as follows:
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.[9] [10] 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.[11]
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).
| No. | Year | Portrait | Name | Born | Died | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1947 | Prague, Austria-Hungary | Glendale, Missouri,  United States | ""for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen."[12] (shared with Carl Ferdinand Cori and Bernardo Houssay) | |||
| 2 | 1977 | Rosalyn Yalow | New York City, New York, United States | The Bronx, New York, United States | "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones."[13] (shared with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally) | ||
| 3 | 1983 | Barbara McClintock | Hartford, Connecticut, United States | Huntington, New York, United States | "for her discovery of mobile genetic elements."[14] | ||
| 4 | 1986 | Rita Levi-Montalcini | Turin, Kingdom of Italy | Rome,  Italy | "for their discoveries of growth factors."[15] (shared with Stanley Cohen) | ||
| 5 | 1988 | Gertrude Belle Elion | New York City, New York, United States | Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States | "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment."[16] (shared with James W. Black and George H. Hitchings) | ||
| 6 | 1995 | Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard | Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Nazi Germany | "for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development."[17] (shared with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus) | |||
| 7 | 2004 | Linda Buck | Seattle, Washington, United States | "for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system"[18] (shared with Richard Axel) | |||
| 8 | 2008 | Françoise Barré-Sinoussi | Paris, French Fourth Republic | "for their discovery of HIV, human immunodeficiency virus."[19] (shared with Harald zur Hausen and Luc Montagnier) | |||
| 9 | 2009 | Elizabeth Blackburn | Hobart, Tasmania,  Australia | "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."[20] (shared with Jack W. Szostak) | |||
| 10 | Carolyn Greider | San Diego, California, United States | |||||
| 11 | 2014 | May-Britt Moser | Fosnavåg,  Norway | "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain."[21] (shared with Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe) | |||
| 12 | 2015 | Tú Yōuyōu | Ningbo, Zhejiang, Republic of China | "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria."[22] (shared with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura) | |||
| 13 | 2023 | Katalin Karikó | Szolnok, Hungarian People's Republic | "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19."[23] (shared with Drew Weissman) |
| No. | Year | Portrait | Name | Born | Died | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1903 | Marie Skłodowska-Curie | Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire | 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"[24] (shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) | ||
| 2 | 1963 | Maria Göppert Mayer | Katowice, Prussia, German Empire | San Diego, California, United States | "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure."[25] (shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner) | ||
| 3 | 2018 | Donna Strickland | Guelph, Ontario,  Canada | "for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses."[26] (shared with Gérard Mourou) | |||
| 4 | 2020 | Andrea Mia Ghez | New York City, New York United States | "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy."[27] (shared with Reinhard Genzel) | |||
| 5 | 2023 | Anne L’Huillier | Paris, French Fourth Republic | "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter."[28] (shared with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz) |
| No. | Year | Portrait | Name | Born | Died | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1909 | Selma Lagerlöf | Sunne, Värmland, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway | Sunne, Värmland,  Sweden | "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."[36] | ||
| 2 | 1926 | Nuoro, Sardinia, Kingdom of Italy | 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."[37] | |||
| 3 | 1928 | Sigrid Undset | Kalundborg, Zealand, | Lillehammer, Norway | "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages."[38] | ||
| 4 | 1938 | Pearl Buck | Hillsboro, West Virginia, United States | Danby, Vermont, United States | "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."[39] | ||
| 5 | 1945 | Gabriela Mistral | Vicuña,  Chile | 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."[40] | ||
| 6 | 1966 | Nelly Sachs | Berlin, | Stockholm, Sweden | "for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength."[41] (shared with Shmuel Yosef Agnon) | ||
| 7 | 1991 | Nadine Gordimer | Springs, Gauteng, Union of South Africa | Johannesburg, Gauteng,  South Africa | "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity."[42] | ||
| 8 | 1993 | Toni Morrison | Lorain, Ohio, United States | 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."[43] | ||
| 9 | 1996 | Wisława Szymborska | Kórnik, Second Polish Republic | Kraków,  Poland | "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."[44] | ||
| 10 | 2004 | Elfriede Jelinek | 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."[45] | |||
| 11 | 2007 | Doris Lessing | Kermanshah, Guarded Domains of Iran | London,  United Kingdom | "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."[46] | ||
| 12 | 2009 | Herta Müller | Nițchidorf, Romanian People's Republic | "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."[47] | |||
| 13 | 2013 | Alice Munro | Wingham, Ontario, Canada | Port Hope, Ontario, Canada | "master of the contemporary short story"[48] | ||
| 14 | 2015 | Svetlana Alexievich | Stanislav, Ukrainian SSR, | "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."[49] | |||
| 15 | 2018 | Olga Tokarczuk | Sulechów, Poland | "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."[50] | |||
| 16 | 2020 | Louise Glück | New York City, New York, United States | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States | "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."[51] | ||
| 17 | 2022 | Annie Ernaux | 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."[52] | |||
| 18 | 2024 | Han Kang | Gwangju, | "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."[53] |
| No. | Year | Portrait | Name | Born | Died | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1905 | Bertha von Suttner | Prague, Austrian Empire | Vienna, | "for her audacity to oppose the horrors of war."[54] | ||
| 2 | 1931 | Jane Addams | Cedarville, Illinois, United States | 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."[55] (shared with Nicholas Murray Butler) | ||
| 3 | 1946 | Emily Greene Balch | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States | "for her lifelong work for the cause of peace."[56] (shared with John Raleigh Mott) | ||
| 4 | 1976 | Betty Williams | Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom | Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom | "for the courageous efforts in founding a movement to put an end to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland."[57] | ||
| 5 | Mairead Maguire | Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom | |||||
| 6 | 1979 | Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (rel. name: Mother Teresa) | Skopje, | Kolkata, West Bengal,  India | "for her work for bringing help to suffering humanity."[58] | ||
| 7 | 1982 | Alva Myrdal | Uppsala, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway | Danderyd, Sweden | "for their work for disarmament and nuclear and weapon-free zones."[59] (shared with Alfonso García Robles) | ||
| 8 | 1991 | Aung San Suu Kyi | Yangon, State of Burma | "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights."[60] | |||
| 9 | 1992 | Rigoberta Menchú | 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."[61] | |||
| 10 | 1997 | Jody Williams | Rutland, Vermont, United States | "for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines."[62] (shared with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines) | |||
| 11 | 2003 | 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."[63] | ||||
| 12 | 2004 | Wangarĩ Maathai | Tetu, Nyeri, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya | Nairobi,  Kenya | "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace."[64] | ||
| 13 | 2011 | Ellen Johnson Sirleaf | Monrovia,  Liberia | "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."[65] | |||
| 14 | Leymah Gbowee | Monrovia, Liberia | |||||
| 15 | Tawakkol Karman | Shara'b As Salam, Taiz, Yemen Arab Republic | |||||
| 16 | 2014 | Malala Yousafzai | Mingora, Swat,  Pakistan | "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."[66] (shared with Kailash Satyarthi) | |||
| 17 | 2018 | Nadia Murad | Kocho, Iraqi Republic | "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict."[67] (shared with Denis Mukwege) | |||
| 18 | 2021 | Maria Ressa | Manila,  Philippines | "for their effort to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."[68] (shared with Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov) | |||
| 19 | 2023 | Narges Mohammadi | 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."[69] |
| No. | Year | Portrait | Name | Born | Died | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2009 | Elinor Ostrom | Los Angeles, California, United States | Bloomington, Indiana, United States | "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons."[70] (shared with Oliver E. Williamson) | ||
| 2 | 2019 | Esther Duflo | Paris,  France | "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."[71] (shared with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer) | |||
| 3 | 2023 | Claudia Goldin | New York City, New York, United States | "for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes"[72] |
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