List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize in Physics

Clockwise from top left: Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Kathleen Lonsdale and Hertha Ayrton were among the influential 20th-century female scientists who largely contributed in field of physics, engineering and astronomy but were never considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics.

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]

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] From 1902 to 1975, 13 women have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and three of the nominees were subsequently awarded.

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, the notable scientists Alice Ball, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Hertha Ayrton, Harriet Brooks, Agnes Pockels, Margaret Eliza Maltby, Mileva Marić, Maud Menten, Elda Emma Anderson, Hertha Sponer, Kathleen Lonsdale, Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz, Katherine Burr Blodgett, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat, Katharina Boll-Dornberger and Leona Woods were not included.^[7] Currently, the Nobel archives has revealed nominations from 1901 to 1975, the other enlisted women were verified nominations based on public and private news agencies.