List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize (Swedish: Nobelpriset) is a set of five different prizes that, according to its benefactor Alfred Nobel, in his 1895 will, must be awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind". The five prizes are awarded in the fields of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, and Peace.^[1]

Clockwise from top left: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Rosalind Franklin, Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf were among the influential 20th-century women who largely contributed in their fields but were never considered for the Nobel Prizes.

As of 2025, 68 Nobel Prizes and the Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to 67 women^[2] and since 1901, the year wherein the awarding of the prizes began, hundreds of women have already been nominated and shortlisted carefully in each field.^[3][4]

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.^[5][6] Curie is also 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.^[5] Of the currently revealed female nominees both in physics and chemistry, the notable scientists Alice Ball, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Harriet Brooks, Agnes Pockels, Margaret Eliza Maltby, Mileva Marić, Maud Menten, Elda Emma Anderson, Maria Lipp, Astrid Cleve, Hertha Sponer, Kathleen Lonsdale, Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz, Helen Parsons, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Katherine Burr Blodgett, Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat, Katharina Boll-Dornberger Elizabeth Rona and Leona Woods were not included.^[7]

In 1912, Mary Edwards Walker became the first ever woman nominated for prize in physiology or medicine but her nomination was later declared invalid by the Nobel Committee because her nominator was not invited to nominate that year.^[8] Hence, Cécile Vogt-Mugnier, nominated first in 1922, became the official first female nominee but never won despite numerous recommendations.^[3] She was followed by Maud Slye who was nominated in the year 1923, but again never won. Only in 1947, that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was finally awarded to a woman, Gerty Cori, sharing with her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori.^[9] Of the currently revealed female nominees, the physiologists Nettie Stevens, María Orosa, Florence R. Sabin, Rosalind Franklin, Louise Pearce, Esther Killick, Hattie Alexander, Dorothy Hansine Andersen, Frieda Robscheit-Robbins, Virginia Apgar, Olga Bridgman and Alice Catherine Evans were not included.

The most number of female nominees was in the field of literature. The first woman to be nominated was the German memoirist Malwida von Meysenbug for the year 1901.^[3] She was nominated by the French historian Gabriel Monod but unfortunately did not win the prize.^[10] Her nomination was followed by Émilie Lerou and Selma Lagerlöf for the year 1904. Lagerlöf would later on become the first woman to win the prize in the year 1909.^[11] Of the 83 currently revealed female nominees for the literature category, the celebrated authors Kate Chopin, Sarah Orne Jewett, Delmira Agustini, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Edith Nesbit, Carmen de Burgos, Begum Rokeya, Lu Yin, Alfonsina Storni, Marina Tsvetaeva, Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, Jelena Dimitrijević, Else Lasker-Schüler, Gertrude Stein, Emma Orczy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Hamilton, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Fannie Hurst, Nancy Mitford, Rosario Castellanos, Hannah Arendt, Agatha Christie, Clarice Lispector and Jean Rhys were not included.^[12][13][14]

The first women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize were Belva Ann Lockwood and Bertha von Suttner, who would eventually be awarded in 1905.^[3] The latter was considered for authoring Lay Down Your Arms! and contributing to the creation of the Prize.^[15] Of the 64 currently revealed female nominees, the famous Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Frances Xavier Cabrini, Millicent Fawcett, Mary Harris Jones, Olive Schreiner, Aletta Jacobs, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ida B. Wells, Käthe Kollwitz, Muriel Lester, Katharine Drexel, Helene Schweitzer, Marie Stopes, Virginia Gildersleeve, Vera Brittain, Bertha Lutz, Ava Helen Pauling, Golda Meir, Rachel Carson and Rosa Parks were not included.^[16][17] Based on leaked nominations, the youngest nominee in the category was Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was nominated posthumously in 2025.^[18]