List of women fellows of the Royal Society

Fellowship of the Royal Society is open to scientists, engineers and technologists from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations, on the basis of having made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science".^[4] Election to the Fellowship is highly regarded and sought after, bringing academic prestige to both the individual and the institution with which they are associated.^[5] For scientists in the United Kingdom, the recognition is considered second only to the award of a Nobel Prize.^[6]

Awarded forContributions to the improvement of natural knowledge”^[1]

Sponsored byRoyal Society

Date1945 (1945)

LocationLondon

Quick facts Female fellows of the Royal Society, Awarded for ...

Female fellows of the Royal Society
Female fellows of the Royal Society elected from 2014 to 2018
Awarded for	Contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge”[1]
Sponsored by	Royal Society
Date	1945 (1945)
Location	London
Country	United Kingdom
Total percentage of fellows	Since Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson in 1945, around 9% of fellows of the Royal Society are women.[2][3]
Website	royalsociety.org/fellows

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While there was no explicit prohibition of women as Fellow of the Royal Society in its original charters and statutes, election to the fellowships was for much of the Society's history de facto closed to women. As a result of the dissolution of nunneries in connection with the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, and female exclusion from schools and universities, the formal education of British girls and women was effectively non-existent throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Women slowly gained admittance to learned societies in the UK starting in the 19th century, with the founding of the Zoological Society of London in 1829 and the Royal Entomological Society in 1833, both of which admitted women fellows from their inception.^[7][8]

The question of women being admitted to the Royal Society was first recorded in 1900, when Marian Farquharson, the first female fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, wrote to the Council of the Royal Society petitioning that "duly qualified women should have the advantage of full fellowship". The Council replied that the question of women fellows "must depend on the interpretation to be placed upon the Royal Charters under which the Society has been governed for more than three hundred years".^[7] When Hertha Ayrton was nominated for fellowship in 1902, her candidature was turned down on the basis that as a married woman she had no standing in law.^[9] The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 made it illegal for an incorporated society to refuse admission on the grounds of an individual's sex or marital status. While the Society acknowledged the provision of section 1 of the Act in 1925, in reply to a question originally put to them by the Women's Engineering Society three years earlier, it was not until 1943 that another woman was nominated for fellowship. Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson were duly elected in 1945, after a postal vote amending the Society's statutes to explicitly allow women fellows.^[7][8]

As of 2020^[update], a total of 198 women have been elected fellows. Two women have been elected under the Society's former Statute 12 regulation and two Honorary Fellows for their service to the cause of science. Another four women, from the British Royal Family, have been either Royal Fellow or Patron of the Society. Thirty six more women have been elected as Foreign Members. Of the approximately 1,600 living fellows and foreign members in 2018, 8.5 per cent are women compared to 0.4% in 1945, according to a historical research project conducted by Aileen Fyfe and Camilla Mørk Røstvik.^[3][10]