List of Female Nobel Laureates

List Of Female Nobel Laureates

The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace, Physiology or Medicine and Economics. All but the economics prize were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. The Nobel prize in Economics, or The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for outstanding contributions in the field of Economics. Each prize is awarded by a separate committee; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics, the Swedish Academy awards the Prize in Literature, the Karolinska Institute awards the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Prize in Peace. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a cash prize that has varied throughout the years. In 1901, the winners of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. In 2008, the winners were awarded a prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK. The awards are presented in Stockholm (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Economics) and Oslo (Peace) in an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Following the awards of 2011 (other than the 2011 Economics Prize), the Nobel Prize has been awarded 807 times to men and 44 times to women (there have also been 23 awards to organizations). 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. Curie is also the only woman to have won multiple Nobel Prizes; in 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (and is accordingly included twice in the total figure of 44 for female laureates). 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. Fifteen women have won the Nobel Peace Prize, twelve have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, ten have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, four have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, two have won the Nobel Prize in Physics and one woman (in 2009) has won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The most Nobel Prizes awarded to women in a single year was in 2009, when five women became laureates.