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This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is a historic first for women.
It was the first time that a Nobel Prize in science had been awarded to more than one woman, but not men, in a specific category. This has happened 169 times for multiple men and no women in a specific category since the awards were given starting in 1901.
In the 120 years of Nobel laureates in medicine, physics and chemistry, the prizes were awarded 599 times to men and 23 times to women. The prize can be divided into up to three or given to two or just one person. Some people, like Marie Curie, have won more than once and there have been several years where no prizes are awarded.
Three other times, a woman won one of the sciences for herself. This has happened to men 147 times. This means that four times, including this year in chemistry, there have been all-female awards in one of the three sciences and 316 times, including this year in medicine, there have been all-male awards in one of the sciences.
This is also the second time that the one-year science award has been awarded to more than one woman. In 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider shared the medical award for discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres with Jack Szostak.
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This year, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the chemistry award for developing the CRISPR method of genome editing.
In 1911, Marie Curie gained chemistry for herself by the discovery of radium and polonium.
Susan Walsh / AP
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier (left) and Jennifer Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.”
In 1964, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was the only chemistry winner for using X-rays to understand important biochemicals. In 1983, Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of mobile genetic elements.
Women have won the most awards in medicine with 12, seven in chemistry and four in physics.
“For too long, many discoveries made by women have been downplayed and simply not recognized,” said American Chemical Society president Luis Echegoyen, a professor of chemistry at the University of Texas El Paso. “The underrepresentation of women in science has been too clear.”
