This list tries to avoid women who are famous primarily for being "the first woman" to do something.

The most famous woman scientist, and someone who would rank high on anyone's list of great scientists, is Madame Marie Curie (1867 - 1934), chemist and physicist. She pioneeered research into radioactivity (a word she herself invented), discovered the elements polonium and radium and isolated them, and discovered the nature of radiation and beta rays. She was the first professor at the Sorbonne, and then the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. She was the first person of either sex to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences: Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911.

A few earlier women scientists, about whom generally not much is known, include:

Hypatia of Alexander, 355 or 370 - 415/416 CE, mathematician and astronomer, who may have invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydromerter and the hydroscope;

Hildegard of Bingen, 1098 - 1179, who wrote books on medicine and nature (as well as writing about spirituality and visions and composing music); and

Caroline Herschel (1750 - 1848), who was the first woman to discover a comet and whose work with her brother, William Herschel, led to the discovery of the planet Uranus.

There were several great women scientists in the 20th and 21st centuries, people who transformed our lives:

Rachel Carson authored the book, Silent Spring, which brought the plight of the environment to the attention of milllions of people and inspired the environmentalist movement.

Gertrude Bell Elion discovered medications for HIV/AIDS, herpes, immunity disorders, and leukemia, and shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for physiology / medicine.

Primatologist Diane Fossey studied the behavior of gorillas in their natural habitat and fought for preservation of that habitat.

Rosalind Franklin had a key role in discovering the helix structure of DNA (Crick and Watson received a Nobel Prize for their efforts while Franklin was ignored.

Jane Goodall improved our knowledge of primate behavior with her chimpanzee observation and research.

Mary Leakey studied early humans and their predecessors working at Olduvai Gorge with her husband Louis Leakey (he received credit for some of her discoveries); and in particular in 1976 she discovered footprints showing that 3.75 million years ago, the early hominid australopithecine walked on two feet rather than four.

Geneticist Barbara McClintock who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine / physiology for her discovery of transposable genes.

Maria Mayer received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for her work on the nuclear shell structure;

Lise Meitner helped develop the theory of nuclear fission (the physics underlying the atomic bomb); unfortunately, she did not receive credit for her contribution when Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize in physics for this work in 1944.

Helen Taussig discovered the cause of infants born with a blue-colored skin ("blue babies"), due to a congenital heart defect resulting in cyanosis (deoxygenated blood) and co-developed a shunt to correct the condition, and was responsible for identifying the drug Thalidomide as the cause of horrendous birth defects.

Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu disproved the "parity principle" in nuclear physics; although her colleaguees Dr. Tsung Dao Lee and Dr. Ning Yang won the Nobel Prize in 1957 for this work, they credited her work as being key to the discovery.

Rosalyn Yalow developed a technique called radioimmunoassay which allows researchers and technicians to measure biological substances, work for which she shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in physiology / medicine with her co-workers;
There are several famous women scientists in history. A few of the scientists were Emilie du Chatelet, Caroline Herschel, and Mary Anning.

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