The role of women in biotechnology

Often hidden from view, women have played a major role in the development of biotechnology and medicine. Indeed, women have been at the cutting edge of biotechnology, including Rosalind Franklin who played a fundamental role in deciphering the structure of DNA; Esther Lederberg who discovered the lambda phage which is now a major tool for studying gene regulation and genetic recombination; Margaret Dayhoff who developed the field of bioinformatics; Janet Mertz who created the first piece of recombinant DNA; and Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier who helped pioneer CRISPR, a revolutionary technique for genome editing.

Here we provide a number of profiles of women who have been key pioneers in biotechnology. These profiles have been compiled as part of an ongoing project to highlight the many contributions women have made to biotechnology. This is a work in progress and we welcome suggestions for other women to be included.

Some of the leading women in biotechnology

Don't hesitate to contact us if you think of other women who have played an important role in the development of biotechnology and who are not here.

June Almeida (1930 - 2007)

Born: Glasgow. Almeida has recently attracted a great deal of media attention in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis as the person responsible for the first visualisation of a human coronavirus. Yet, this barely scratches the surface of her achievements. Leaving school at the age of 16, Almeida managed to forge a major career based on her outstanding skills in electron microscopy. This she did in the midst of bearing a daughter and raising her as a single parent following divorce. Almeida's pioneering advances in immune electron microscopy put her at the forefront of many key breakthroughs in virology in the 1960s and 1970s.

Brigitte Askonas (1923 - 2013)

Born: Vienna, Austria. Askonas co-developed one of the first systems for the cloning of antibody-forming B cells in vivo, some of the earliest monoclonal antibodies. She was also one of the first scientists to isolate and clone virus specific T lymphocytes, laying the foundation for defining different influenza sub-sets and improving vaccines. (Photo credit: Anne-Katrin Purkiss, Wellcome Images B0007461).

Sally Davies (1949)

Born: Birmingham, United Kingdom. Sally Davies was named the sixth most powerful woman in the UK by Woman’s Hour, a BBC radio programme, in 2013. She is the first woman to hold the post of Chief Medical Officer for England. In 2006 she set up the National Institute for Health Research, a body that has revolutionised the approach to clinical and applied research in the UK. She is also at the forefront of spearheading efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance around the world. All this she has achieved in the midst of dealing with a likely variant of dyslexia, being widowed young and becoming a mother in her forties. Much of her career has been shaped by serendipity and her strong desire to make the world a better place.

Margaret Dayhoff (1925 - 1983)

Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Dayhoff is known as the founder of bioinformatics. This she did by pioneering the application of mathematics and computational techniques to the sequencing of proteins and nucleic acids and establishing the first publicly available database for research in the area. (Photo credit: Ruth E Dayhoff, National Library of Medicine).

Jennifer Doudna (1964)

Born: Washington DC, United States. Doudna first made her name uncovering the basic structure and function of the first ribozyme, a type of catalytic ribonucleic acid (RNA) that helps catalyse chemical reactions. This work helped lay the foundation for her later helping to pioneer CRISPR-Cas 9, a tool that has provided the means to edit genes on an unprecedented scale and at minimal cost. In addition to her scientific contributions to CRISPR, Doudna is known for spearheading the public debate to consider the ethical implications of using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit human embryos.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)

Born: London, United Kingdom. Rosalind Franklin was an x-ray crystallographer whose work helped uncover the double-helix structure of DNA. (Photo credit: Vittorio Luzzati).

Carolyn Green (1965 - 2017)

Born: Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Carolyn E Green was a serial entrepreneur in the life sciences community and a leading voice for women in the sector. In her short life she managed to found and head up numerous companies and held many leadership and sales positions in the biopharmaceutical industry. Her crowning achievement was to be hired by Pfizer to head up its new strategic research and development investments initiative. This entailed working with the corporation’s venture fund to establish partnerships with early-stage companies. Green’s enduring patience and strong mentoring skills, together with her passion to develop products to help patients, set her apart from many others in the biotechnology world.

Beverly Griffin (1930 - 2016)

Born: Delhi, Louisiana. Griffin earned two doctorates in chemistry in an era when it was rare for women to pursue a scientific career. She is best known for her pioneering work on the molecular biology of two viruses that cause cancer - the polyomavirus and Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). From the 1980s she was devoted to understanding how in one setting EBV could cause glandular fever, a largely harmless disease, and yet in another Burkitt's Lymphoma, a major killer of children in Central Africa. She also spearheaded efforts to improve the diagnosis and treatment of the cancer and was a tireless campaigner for raising awareness of the plight of children with the disease in Africa. (Photo credit: Tomas Lindahl).

Esther Lederberg (1922 - 2006)

Born: Bronx, New York, United States. Esther Lederberg was a major pioneer of bacterial genetics. She discovered the lambda phage, a bacterial virus which is widely used as a tool to study gene regulation and genetic recombination. She also invented the replica plating technique, which is used to isolate and analyse bacterial mutants and track antibiotic resistance. (Photo credit: The Esther Lederberg Memorial Trust).

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 - 2012)

Born: Turin, Italy. An Italian scientist, Rita Levi-Montalcini helped discover the chemical tools the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerves. This knowledge underpins current investigation into how these processes go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer. (Photo credit: Bernard Becker Medical Library).

Janet Mertz (1949)

Born: The Bronx, New York, USA. Mertz was pivotal to the discovery of the first enzyme for easily joining together DNA from different species and designing the protocol that underpinned the development of the first recombinant DNA cloned in bacteria. Her work not only helped lay the foundation for the development of genetic engineering, but also spurred on the establishment of the first safety guidelines for laboratories involved in genetic manipulation. She has also made key contributions to our understanding about how the human tumour viruses SV40, hepatitis B virus, and Epstein-Barr virus regulate expression of their genes and identified roles oestrogen-related receptors play in breast cancer and responses to therapies. (Photo credit: Janet Mertz).

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (1942)

Born: Magdeburg, Germany. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard won the Nobel Prize in 1995, the sixth woman to do so. She was awarded the Prize on the basis of her groundbreaking research that showed how genes regulate the early development of fruit fly embryos. Her discoveries helped create the new discipline of developmental genetics and laid the foundation for understanding genetic defects in human embryos.

Padmanee Sharma (1970)

Born: Georgetown, Guyana. Padmanee Sharma is a leading figure in oncology, specialising in renal, bladder and prostate cancer. Her prime focus is to understand the mechanisms and pathways within the immune system responsible for tumour rejection. Since 2005 she has been a principal investigator for several clinical trials launched to improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies. Driven by the desperation of her cancer patients, much of Sharma’s high-flying career is down to the strong determination she developed to overcome the poverty and hardships she faced as the child of Indo-Guyanese immigrants who settled in New York when she was 10 years old.

Rosemary Versteegen (1948)

Born: Glasgow, Scotland. Rosemary J Versteegen worked for over twenty years with Life Technologies Inc, which in the 1990s was one of largest suppliers of culture cell products and other scientific reagents to the biotechnology industry. She was pivotal to the company’s success in winning FDA approval for the first diagnostic test using synthetic nucleic acid probes for detecting infection with the human papillomavirus, one of the most common causes of cervical cancer. In addition, Versteegen is one of the co-founders and the Chief Executive Officer of the International Serum Industry Association, an organisation that works to promote standards of excellence and ethics in the animal serum and animal derived products industry.

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (1947)

Born: Paris, France. Barre-Sinoussi shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for helping to identify the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS in 1983. Over the years she has made substantial contributions to understanding the role of innate immune defences in the host in controlling HIV/AIDS and how HIV is transmitted between the mother and child. She has also studied the characteristics that allow some HIV-positive individuals gain resistance to HIV without antiretrioviral drugs. (Photo credit: Karolinska Institute, Press conference, 2008).

Elizabeth Blackburn (1948)

Born: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Blackburn is a molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009. She is best known for having discovered a particular repetative sequence of DNA on the telomere, a particular region found at the end of a chromosome that prevents the chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other. She also helped identify telomerase, an enzyme that helps replenish telomeres which get shorter every time a cell divides. Such shortening is associated with aging and cancer. (Photo credit: Chemical Heritage Foundation).

Gertrude Elion (1918 - 1999)

Born: New York City, United States. Elion shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contributions to the development of a multitude of new drugs. This included drugs for herpes, leukemia, malaria, gout, immune disorders, and AIDS, and immune suppressants to overcome rejection of donated organs in transplant surgery. Her work earned 45 patents. (Photo credit: Wellcome Images).

Carol Greider (1961)

Born: San Diego, California, United States. Greider shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for helping to elucidate the structure of telomeres, a particular region found at the end of a chromosome that prevents the chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, and to identify telomerase, an enzyme that helps replenish telomeres which get shorter every time a cell divides. Such shortening is associated with aging and cancer. She also collaborated in the development of the first telomerase knockout mouse which helped demonstrate how premature aging is linked to increasingly short telomeres. (Photo credit: Keith Weller).

Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer (1953)

Born: Vienna, Austria. Hochmair-Desoyer is an electrical engineer who helped create the world's first micro-electric multi-channel cochlear implant. Developed in 1977 the implant enables the user to not only hear sounds but also to understand speech. Since 2000 she has co-founded a number of medical device companies working to help with hearing loss. In 2013 she was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. (Photo credit: Ingeborg J Hochmair-Desoyer).

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910 - 1994)

Born: Cairo, Egypt. Dorothy Hodgkin, was a British biochemist who developed protein crystallography and X-ray crystallography which was used to confirm the structure of penicillin, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. (Photo credit: Peter Lofts Photography, National Portrait Gallery, London Peter Lofts Photography, National Portrait Gallery, London ).

Mary-Claire King (1946)

Born: Illinois, United States. King is a human geneticist who studies the interplay between genetics and the environment on human disease. She is best known for having identified BRCA1, a single gene responsible for many breast and ovarian cancers. Her technique for identifying the BRCA1 gene is now used for studying many other diseases. She was also responsible for the development of a technique, using mitrochondial DNA and human leukocyte antigen, for genetically identifying the remains of missing people. (Photo credit: Mary-Claire King).

Barbara McClintock (1902 - 1992)

Born: Hartford, Connecticut, United States. Through her work on maize, McClintock demonstrated the ability of genes to change position on the chromosome. (Photo credit: American Philosophical Society).

Sherie Morrison

Born: United States. A key pioneer in the development of antibody engineering techniques, Morrison helped develop some of the first chimeric monoclonal antibodies. This work paved the way to the creation of safer and more effective monoclonal antibody drugs. (Photo credit: Sherie Morrison).

May-Britt Moser (1963)

Born: Fosnavag, Norway. Moser shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for helping to discover cells located in the centre of the brain that are important for determining spacial position. Her work has helped scientists gain new understanding into the cognitive processes and spacial deficits linked to neurological conditions like Alzheimer's disease. (Photo credit: NBC News).

Evelyn Witkin (1921)

Born: New York City, United States. Witkin is an American geneticist who is best known for her work on DNA mutagenesis and DNA repair. She helped elucidate the first co-ordinated stress response. This she did studying the response of bacteria to UV radiation. Witkins was one of the first few women to be elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, in 1977 and in 2002 was awarded the National Medal of Science. (Photo credit: YouTube).

Rosalyn Yalow (1921 - 2011)

Born: New York City, United States. The second American woman to ever be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Yalow is best known for having co-developed a diagnostic technique, known as a radioimmunoassay, for measuring tiny quantities of various biological samples in blood and other bodily fluids. The test's primary detection mechanism is an antibody combined with a radioisotope. First devised for determining insulin levels in diabetes patients, the technique is now used for hundreds of other substances previously difficult to detect because they were too small. Among the substances it can quantify are hormones, vitamins, enzymes. It is also used to measure the effectiveness of dose levels of antibiotics and other drugs. (Photo credit: US Information Agency).

Tu Youyou (1930)

Born: Zhejiang, China. Tu Youyou is a Chinese chemist who discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria. YouYou received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William Campbell and Satoshi Omura. Youyou is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. (Photo credit: Bengt Nyman).

Women in biotechnology: timeline of key events

Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from a medical school in US (Geneva Medical College, New York). In 1857 she set up the New York Dispensary for Indigent Women and Children. A year later she became the first woman registered on UK Medical Register. Blackwell was an ardent promoter of women's education in medicine. In 1874 she helped set up the London School of Medicine for Women which prepared women to take licensing exams. For Blackwell, medicine was a means for social and moral reform. Between 1880 and 1895 she became involved in a number of reform movements, including moral reform, sexual purity, hygiene, Eugenics, medical ethics, and women's rights. 1821-02-03T00:00:00+0000Garrett Anderson was the first woman to qualify as a woman in Britain (1865) and the first woman to receive a medical degree in France (1870). Unable to take up a medical post in any hospital in Britain, Garrett Anderson opened her own practice and in 1866 opened the St Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children. She subsequently co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women (later called the Royal Free Hospital of Medicine). It was the first hospital to be staffed by women and to train women doctors. Garrett Anderson was dean of the hospital's medical school from 1883-1903. .1836-06-19T00:00:00+0000Hyde was a physiologist who is credited with the invention of the intracellular micropippette electrode. It provided the first means to record electrical activity within a cell without destroying the cellular wall. The electrode was powerful enough to stimulate tissue chemically or electronically and small enough to inject or remove tissue from a cell. She devised the electrode as part of her research into animal cardiac movement, circulation, respiration, and nervous systems. Overall her device revolutionised neurophysiology and the study of contractile nerve tissue. Hyde was the first woman to graduate from the University or Hedidelberg and to do research at Harvard Medical School. She was also the first woman to be elected to the American Physiology Society. 1857-09-08T00:00:00+0000Picotte was the first Native American woman to gain a medical degree in the USA. She was first inspired to train as a physician when as a child she witnessed a sick Indian woman die because the local white doctor refused to care for her. Picotte opened a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska and set up a private practice to look after both white and non-white patients. She was a strong campaigner to prohibit alcohol on reservations. 1865-06-17T00:00:00+0000Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, in 1903, and the first person to win it twice, in 1911. She developed techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and discovered the two elements, polonium and radium. Curie also pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes to treat cancer and developed mobile radiography mobile unites to provide X-ray services in field hospitals during World War I. Throughout her life Curie experienced major challenges because of her sex. Denied a regular university education in Poland, her home country, because she was a woman, she had to study in France to get her degree. In 1903 the French Academy of Sciences tried to keep her name off its list of Nobel Prize nominees and the Swedish Academy of Sciences asked her not to attend the Nobel ceremony in 1911 because of negative publicity surrounding her personal life.1867-11-07T00:00:00+0000Wollstein was a pioneer paediatric pathologist at a time when women rarely worked in the field of pathology. One of her key contributions was the development of antiserum therapies to treat both paediatric and adult infectious diseases, including a potent polyvalent antiserum to treat meningitis. She was the first woman to ever be elected a member of the American Pediatric Society. In 1904 she joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research where she did important experimental work on polio, pneumonia and other diseases. Her work was important for showing that mumps could be viral in nature. 1868-11-21T00:00:00+0000Sabin was a pioneering medical scientist who was the first woman to be appointed a full professor at Johns Hopkins University. She was also the first woman to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to head up a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. For many years she was involved in the investigation of the lymphatic system. She demonstrated that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins. She also made many discoveries relating to the origin and development of blood vessels and blood cells. 1871-11-09T00:00:00+0000McCormick was one of the first women to earn a biology degree from MIT. She went on to become a prominent suffragist and philanthropist who played a significant role in the development of the first oral contraceptive pill. She provided $2 million of her own money for the development of the pill, first approved for gynaecological disorders in 1957. McCormick continued to provide funding to improve birth control once the pill was approved. 1875-08-27T00:00:00+0000A trained botanist and geologist, Stopes was the first female academic to get a position at the University of Manchester where she conducted research on plant palaeontology and coal classification. She is best known for her campaigning work to make birth control available to women. In 1921 she helped to open the first clinic in London that offered birth control advice and dispensed contraception to poor mothers.1880-10-15T00:00:00+0000Dick originally trained as a zoologist and then completed a medical degree. She made her name studying scarlet fever after she herself caught the disease. In 1923 she and her husband George Dick, worked out that the disease was caused by a toxin released by a strain of Streptococcus bacteria. This enabled them to create an antitoxin for treatment and vaccine for prevention. She also devised a technique to prevent cross infection of scarlet fever among infants. Known as the Dick Aseptic Nursery Technique this promoted strict sterilisation and aseptic procedures. 1881-12-18T00:00:00+0000Willis was a haematologist who discovered a nutritional factor in yeast, now known as folic acid, which prevents and cures macrocytic anaemia, a life-threatening condition that can develop in pregnancy. The disease is particularly prevalent in poor women in the tropics who have inadequate diets. Willis made her discovery while working in India. Noticing that wealthy women seemed to suffer less from the symptoms of anaemia than poor women, Willis hypothesised that the disease was linked to nutrition. She found that liver supplements and Marmite, a spread high in vitamin B made from brewer's yeast could combat anaemia in rats. This led her to successfully treating anaemia in pregnant Indian women by using liver supplements and Marmite. Her results were published in 1931. 1888-05-10T00:00:00+0000Ball was an African-American chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy or Hansen's disease. The treatment emerged out of her investigation of the chemical makeup of the active principle of the Piper methysticum (kava), a plant grown on the Pacific islands, for her master's thesis at the University of Hawaii. Aged just 23 she developed an extract from the plant that was easily absorbed in the body when injected. Sadly she died a year later and was never given credit for her achievement. She was the first woman and Black African American to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii and the first woman professor at the university.1892-07-24T00:00:00+0000Curie's idea laid the foundation for disproving the traditional belief that atoms were indivisible. She made the hypothesis after discovering that the activity of uranium compounds depend on the quantity of uranium present1897-01-01T00:00:00+00001897-01-01T00:00:00+0000Seibert was a biochemist whose isolation of a pure form of tuberculin (a protein substance from the tuberculosis-causing bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in the 1930s paved the way to her development of the first reliable TB test. Devised at the University of Uppsala, Seibert's test, which is carried out on the skin, was adopted as the standard TB test in the United States in 1941 and by the World Health Organisation in 1952. Her test is still in use today. Prior to her work on TB, Seibert invented a new distillation process for intravenous injections that eliminated all bacteria. She developed the technique during her doctorate after finding that intravenous injections contaminated with distilled water could cause fevers in patients. 1897-10-06T00:00:00+00001898-01-01T00:00:00+0000Curie used the term to describe the behaviour of uranium and thorium. 1898-04-01T00:00:00+0000Alexander was a paediatrician and microbiologist. In the 1940s she developed the first effective treatment against Haemophilus influenzae (Hib), a major killer of infants. Her treatment helped reduce mortality from the disease from nearly 100 per cent to less than 25 per cent. It involved the combination of antiserum therapy with sulfa drugs. Alexander was also one of the first scientists to identify and study antibiotics resistance, which emerged out of her search for antibiotics to treat Hib. She worked out that the resistance was due to random genetic mutations in DNA that were positively selected through evolution. 1901-04-05T00:00:00+0000McClintock was a pioneer in the field of cytogenetics, a branch of genetics concerned with how chromosomes affect cell behaviour. Based on her investigation of how chromosomes change in reproduction in maize she demonstrated in the late 1920s that genes can shift to different locations by themselves. In the 1940s and 1950s she showed that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off, a process called transposition. Initially scientists were sceptical of her findings so she stopped publishing her data in 1953. By the 1960s and 1970s attitudes towards her work changed as more scientists made similar findings. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her work.1902-06-16T00:00:00+0000Vogt was a pharmacologist who left Nazi Germany in 1933 for Britain where she became one of the leading neuroscientists of the twentieth century. Her most important contribution was advancing knowledge about the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. She demonstrated that the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine enable brain cells to communicate. In 1954 she published a paper on sympathin which helped to establish the important role of amines in the brain and paved the way to the development of modern anti-depressant therapy.1903-09-08T00:00:00+0000Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with the physicist Antoine Becquerel and her husband Pierre Curie. The Prize was given in recognition for the work they did on radiation. Originally the Nobel Committee failed to include Marie in on the award but changed their position after receiving a complaint from Pierre who had been alerted by Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler of their failure to recognise Marie's work. 1903-12-10T00:00:00+0000Gwei-djen was a biochemist who undertook pioneering work on metabolic pathways. In 1933, Gwei-djen took the bold decision to leave China, then isolated from the West, to study for a doctorate at Cambridge University where she remained for the rest of her career. By 1939 she had developed the first sensitive assay for detecting low levels of pyruvic acid, an intermediate involved in the breakdown of carbohydrates. Her work demonstrated that the levels of pyruvic acid could be raised by vitamin B1 deficiency and exercise. Gwei-djen worked closely with both Dorothy and Joseph Needham. Together with Joseph she compiled a series of books detailing Chinese achievements in science and technology.1904-07-22T00:00:00+0000Studying the mealworm, Stevens found that males made reproductive cells with both X and Y chromosomes whereas the females made only those with X. NM Stevens, 'Studies in spermatogenesis with special reference to the accessory chromosome', Studies in Sermatogenesis (Washington, DC, 1905), 1-32. 1905-01-01T00:00:00+0000Stewart was a physician who was the first person to demonstrate the link between x-rays of pregnant women and childhood cancer. While it took time for her findings, first published in 1956, to be accepted, her work paved the way to the eventual curtailment of the use of medical x-rays during pregnancy and early childhood. The early criticism of her results prevented her from being appointed a professor. She only gained proper recognition for her research after an American study confirmed her findings in 1962. She was invited to become the first Chair of the European Committee on Radiation Risk in 1997. 1906-10-04T00:00:00+0000Levi-Montalcini is best known for sharing the Nobel Prize in 1986 for helping to discover and isolate the nerve growth factor which helps regulate the growth, maintenance, proliferation and survival of certain neurons. Banned by Mussolini from working in academia because she was Jewish, Levi-Montalcini conducted much of her early work in a makeshift laboratory in her bedroom. She later became the director of the Research Center of Neurobiology and the Laboratory of Cellular Biology in Washington University and founded the European Brain Research Institute. 1909-04-22T00:00:00+0000Apgar was an obstetrical anaesthesiologist who introduced the first test for assessing the health of newborn babies in 1953. Known as the Apgar Score. this test assesses the baby's heart rate, respiration, colour, muscle tone and reflect irritability. During the rubella pandemic of 1964-65, Apgar became a strong advocate for universal vaccination to prevent mother to child transmission of the disease. She also promoted the effective use of Rh testing to identify women at risk of transmitting maternal antibodies against they placenta which can cause life-threatening anaemia in the baby. Apgar was the first woman to head a specialty division at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. 1909-06-07T00:00:00+0000Dorothy Hodgkin, was a British chemist who pioneered protein crystallography, a technique the uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three dimensional structure of protein crystals. She used the technique to confirm the structure of penicillin, in 1945, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Hodgkin was the third woman to win the Nobel Prize. In addition to penicillin, Hodgkin published the first structure of a steroid and deciphered the structure of vitamin B12 and insulin. Her protein crystallography technique is now an essential tool for research into structural biology.1910-05-12T00:00:00+0000Born in Britain, Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from a medical school in US (Geneva Medical College, New York). In 1857 she set up the New York Dispensary for Indigent Women and Children. A year later she became the first woman registered on UK Medical Register. Blackwell was an ardent promoter of women's education in medicine. In 1874 she helped set up the London School of Medicine for Women which prepared women to take the licensing exams. Blackwell saw medicine as a tool for social and moral reform. Between 1880 and 1895 she was involved in a number of reform movements, including moral reform, sexual purity, hygiene, Eugenics, medical ethics, and women's rights. 1910-05-31T00:00:00+0000Hobby was a microbiologist whose work was pivotal to scaling up the production of penicillin in World War II and the development of other antibiotics. She first became involved in work on nonpathogenic organisms when doing her doctorate at Columbia University in 1935. From 1934 to 1943 Hobby worked for Presbyterian Hospital and the Columbia Medical School. Thereafter she went to work for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in New York where she conducted research on streptomycin and other antibiotics. She founded the monthly publication 'Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy' in 1972 and published 'Penicillin: Meeting the Challenge' in 1985. 1910-11-19T00:00:00+00001911-01-01T00:00:00+0000Known as 'Petits Curies' the technology helped locate fractures, bullets and shrapnel in wounded soldiers. 1914-01-01T00:00:00+0000Picotte was the first Native American woman to gain a medical degree in the USA. She was first inspired to train as a physician when as a child she witnessed a sick Indian woman die because the local white doctor refused to care for her. Picotte opened a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska and set up a private practice to look after both white and non-white patients. She was a strong campaigner to prohibit alcohol on reservations. 1915-09-18T00:00:00+0000Stern was the first to describe how a healthy cell changes into a cancerous cell. She showed that a normal cell goes through 250 distinct stages before it become cancerous. Stern's work helped transform cervical cancer into an easily diagnosed and treatable condition. She also demonstrated the links between the herpes simplex virus and cervical cancer and between cervical cancer and the oral contraceptive pill. 1915-09-19T00:00:00+0000Ball was an African-American chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy or Hansen's disease. The treatment emerged out of her investigation of the chemical makeup of the active principle of the Piper methysticum (kava), a plant grown on the Pacific islands, for her master's thesis at the University of Hawaii. Aged just 23 she developed an extract from the plant that was easily absorbed in the body when injected. Sadly she died a year later and was never given credit for her achievement. She was the first woman and Black African American to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii and the first woman chemistry professor at the university.1916-12-31T00:00:00+0000Chatterjee was an organic chemist who was the first woman to receive a doctorate in science from an Indian university - Calcutta University. Most of her work concentrated on researching various alkaloid compounds. She is best known for her discovery of the anti-epileptic activity of Marsilea minuta, an aquatic fern, which led to the development of the an epilepsy drug called Ayush-56. Chatterjee also found the anti-malarial properties of the plants Alstonia scholaris, Swertia chirata, Picrorhiza kurroa and Caesalpinia crista which led to antimalarial drugs. 1917-09-23T00:00:00+0000Garrett Anderson was the first woman to qualify as a woman in Britain (1865) and the first woman to receive a medical degree in France (1870). Unable to take up a medical post in any hospital in Britain, Garrett Anderson opened her own practice and in 1866 opened the St Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children. She subsequently co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women (later called the Royal Free Hospital of Medicine). It was the first hospital to be staffed by women and to train women doctors. Garrett Anderson was dean of the hospital's medical school from 1883-1903. . 1917-12-17T00:00:00+0000Elion was a biochemist and pharmacologist renowned for developing new methods to design drugs that took advantage of the biochemical differences between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents). The aim was to create a drug capable of killing or inhibiting the reproduction of pathogens without harming healthy cells. Elion helped develop a number of drugs for a variety of diseases, including leukaemia and malaria. One of her most notable achievements was the creation of the first immunosuppressive drug for organ transplant patients. In 1988 she was joined awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 'discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.'1918-01-23T00:00:00+0000Saruhashi is renowned for being the first scientist to demonstrate the dangers of radioactive fallout in seawater that resulted from nuclear bomb testing in 1954. Her evidence was later used to prevent further nuclear testing by governments. Despite her achievement, she suffered discrimination as a woman scientist. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1957. Convinced that technical expertise was the key to women's independence she established the Society of Japanese Scientists in 1958 to promote women in science. 1920-03-22T00:00:00+0000Franklin was a biophysicist. She is best known for having taken photo 51, in 1952, which provided the first evidence of the double helix structure of DNA. She took the photo using x-ray crystallography. Data from the photo was pivotal to Crick and Watson's building of their DNA double helical structure of DNA FOR which they won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Sadly Franklin died too early to receive the Nobel Prize for her work.1920-07-25T00:00:00+0000Witkin is best known for her work on DNA mutagenesis and DNA repair. She helped elucidate the first co-ordinated stress response. This she did by studying the response of bacteria to UV radiation. Witkins was one of the first few women to be elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, in 1977. She was also awarded the National Medal of Science in 2002. 1921-03-09T00:00:00+0000Daly trained as a biochemist and was the first Black American woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry (from Columbia University, 1947). Her early research looked at the effects of cholesterol on the mechanisms of the heart, the effects sugars and other nutrients on the health of the arteries and the impact of advanced aged and hypertension on the circulatory system. This she did at Rockefeller Institute in New York. She subsequently joined Columbia University where she investigated how proteins are produced and organised in the cell. In addition to her scientific work, Daly was an ardent campaigner for getting minority students into medical school and graduate science programmes. 1921-04-16T00:00:00+0000Yalow was a medical physicist who made her name by helping to develop the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique. RIA uses two reagents. One is a radioisotope atom bound to a molecule of the target substance and the other is an antibody that will bind to the target substance when the two are in contact. Measurements are taken of the initial radioactivity of the mixture which is then added to a measured quantity of fluid, such as blood, that contains low concentrations of an unknown target substance. The test takes advantage of the fact that antibodies prefer to attach to non-radioactive molecules. Measurements are taken of the reduction in radioactivity of the antibody reagent to calculate the concentration of the target substance. The RIA method is now an important component in diagnostic tests, being used to measure the concentration of hormones, vitamins, viruses, enzymes, drugs and other substances. The technique transformed the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes and other hormonal problems related to growth, thyroid function and fertility. It is used to test for phenylketonuria in newborn babies, a rare inherited disorder that if left untreated can lead to intellectual disability, seizures, behavioural problems and mental disorder. In 1977 Yalow became the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize for the physiology or medicine category. . It was awarded on the basis of her RIA work. 1921-07-19T00:00:00+0000Koshland was an immunologist who was a major pioneer in the field of antibodies. Her work was instrumental in showing antibodies to be discrete entities and knowledge about the origins of antibody specificity. In the 1960s, she demonstrated that the efficiency and effectiveness with which antibodies can combat foreign invaders is determined by their different amino acid compositions. By the 1990s she had unravelled the process that accompanies and directs B cell activation and maturation. A major role-model for other women scientists, Koshland was nearly not awarded her PhD because her professor thought it would be a waste because she was pregnant. 1921-10-25T00:00:00+0000Datta was a microbial geneticist who showed that multi-antibiotic resistance was transferred between bacteria by plasmids. She first made the connection in 1959 after investigating a severe outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium phage-type 27 at Hammersmith Hospital where she worked. This involved an examination of 309 cultures, of which she found 25 were drug resistant, eight of which were resistant to Streptomycin which had been used to treat the patients. She concluded that the antibiotic resistance developed over time because the earlier cultures of the salmonella typhimurium infection (from the start of the outbreak) were not drug resistant. 1922-09-17T00:00:00+0000Lederberg is best known for having discovered the lambda phage, an indispensable tool for studying gene regulation and genetic recombination. She also invented the replica plating technique which is pivotal to tracking antibiotic resistance. 1922-12-18T00:00:00+0000Askonas was a leading figure in immunology whose work helped to establish the basic mechanisms and components of immune system. Together with colleagues she developed one of the first systems for the cloning of antibody-forming B cells in vivo, some of the earliest monoclonal antibodies. She was also one of the first scientists to isolate and clone virus specific T lymphocytes, laying the foundation for defining different influenza sub-sets and improving vaccines.1923-04-01T00:00:00+0000Dayhoff is known as the founder of bioinformatics. This she did by pioneering the application of mathematics and computational techniques to the sequencing of proteins and nucleic acids and establishing the first publicly available database for research in the area. 1925-03-11T00:00:00+0000McLaren was a major pioneer in the development of IVF. She was also the key architect behind the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Act (1990) which provided the world’s first legal guidelines for infertility treatment and all human embryo research. Following this Act, McLaren served for 10 years on the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, established in 1991, and became a critical player in debates about the governance of embryonic stem cells for therapy. She also made history in 1991 by becoming the Royal Society’s first woman officer. 1927-04-26T00:00:00+0000The Cori's work helped identify the cyclical process that muscle cells use to make and store energy. Their insights into the process of sugar metabolism opened up new understandings of diabetes and the means to treat it. 1929-01-01T00:00:00+0000Stahl is a molecular biologist and geneticist who helped to elucidate how DNA is replicated. Together with Matthew Medelsohn, Stahl showed that the double-stranded helix molecule of DNA separates into two strands and that each of these strands serve as a template for the production of a new strand of DNA. They did this in 1958. Following this work, Stahl did extensive work on bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, and their genetic recombination. In 1964 he established that DNA in T4 bacteriophages is circular rather than linear. Eight years later he and his wife, Mary, found a DNA sequence in the lambda bacteriophage necessary to initiate genetic recombination. This laid the foundation for genetic engineering. 1929-10-08T00:00:00+0000Griffin was a leading expert on viruses that cause cancer. She was the first woman appointed to Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital. In 1980 she completed the sequence of the poliovirus, the longest piece of eukaryotic DNA to be sequenced at that time. She devoted her life to understanding the Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of Burkitt's Lymphoma, a deadly form of cancer. The virus is also now thought to cause multiple sclerosis. 1930-01-23T00:00:00+0000June Almeida was a major pioneer of electron microscopy which helped transform knowledge about virology. She is best known for taking the first electron micrograph of the rubella virus and a human coronavirus. Her work also helped uncover the structure of the hepatitis B virus which paved the way to developing a vaccine against hepatitis B. She also published some of the first high quality images of HIV. 1930-10-05T00:00:00+0000Youyou is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria. She made the discovery while working as head of the research group at the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica for Project 523. This project was initiated by the Chinese government at the height of the Vietnam War to help find a treatment for malaria that was claiming the lives of numerous soldiers among the North Vietnam allied forces. Youyou and her team found the treatment after testing 380 extracts from about 200 plant species for their capability to eliminate malaria parasites in the blood of infected mice. In 2015 Youyou became the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine which was awarded for her work on malaria. 1930-12-30T00:00:00+0000This was based on their experiments with the variegated colour pattern of maize kernels which showed that some genetic elements on the chromosome are capable of movement. They published their results in 'A Correlation of Cytological and Genetical Crossing-Over in Zea Mays',PNAS, 7/8 (1931), 492-97. 1931-08-01T00:00:00+00001934-01-01T00:00:00+0000Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, in 1903, and the first person to win it twice, in 1911. She developed techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and discovered the two elements, polonium and radium. Curie also pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes to treat cancer and developed mobile radiography mobile unites to provide X-ray services in field hospitals during World War I. Throughout her life Curie experienced major challenges because of her sex. Denied a regular university education in Poland, her home country, because she was a woman, she had to study in France to get her degree. In 1903 the French Academy of Sciences tried to keep her name off its list of Nobel Prize nominees and the Swedish Academy of Sciences asked her not to attend the Nobel ceremony in 1911 because of negative publicity surrounding her personal life.1934-07-04T00:00:00+0000The observation was reported by Gregory Pincus and Barbara Saunders, 'The comparative behavior of mammalian eggs in vivo and in vitro: VI. The maturation of human ovarian ova', Anat. Rec., 75 (1939), 537–45.1939-01-01T00:00:00+0000Yonath is a biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for helping to map the structure of ribosomes, the molecule that helps translate RNA into protein. She started the research in the 1970s using x-ray crystallography. By 2001 she had worked out the complete high-resolution of structures of both ribosomal subunits and discovered a region important to the process of polypeptide polymerisation. In addition to this work Yonath had elucidated the modes of action of over 20 different antibiotics that target the ribosome, which has provided insights into the mechanisms of drug resistance and antibiotic sensitivity. 1939-06-22T00:00:00+0000Wollstein was a pioneering American paediatric pathologist at a time when women rarely worked in the field of pathology. One of her key contributions was the development of antiserum therapies to treat both paediatric and adult infectious diseases, including a potent polyvalent antiserum to treat meningitis. She was the first woman to ever be elected a member of the American Pediatric Society. In 1904 she joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research where she did important experimental work on polio, pneumonia and other diseases. Her work was important for showing that mumps could be viral in nature.1939-09-30T00:00:00+0000The drug was produced from a rabbit anti-serum. It was the first effective treatment. Alexander continued to refine the treatment through the early 1940s. Her work led to a significant reduction in infant mortality from the disease, reducing the mortality rate to 20%. 'Response to antiserums in meningococcic infections of human beings and mice,' American Journal of Diseases of Children, 58/4 (1939), 746-52.1939-10-01T00:00:00+0000The team that undertook the work included Martin Dawson, the clinician and co-ordinator of the project, Glady Hobby who handled the microbiology work and Karl Meyer who did the chemical extraction work. The work was reported in GL Hobby, MH Dawson, et al, 'Effect of the rate of growth of bacteria on action of penicillin', Experimental Biology and Medicine, 56/2 (June 1 1944), 181-4.1940-09-01T00:00:00+0000Witkin discovered the radiation resistance after exposing E coli stain B bacteria to high doses of UV light. She subsequently worked out that the resistance was due to a particular genetic mutation in the bacteria strain which inhibited cell division. Witkin did the work under the guidance of Milislav Demerec at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She published her findings in EM Witkin, 'A case of inherited resistance to radiation in bacteria', Genetics, 31 (1946) 236; EM Witkin, 'Inherited Differences in Sensitivity to Radiation in Escherichia Coli', PNAS USA, 32/3 (1946), 59–68. Witkin's work laid the foundation for showing that cell division is inhibited when DNA is damaged and was the first demonstration of a cell checkpoint. 1944-01-01T00:00:00+0000The work was undertaken by Dorothy Hodgkin and CH (Harry) Carlise. It was published in CH Carlisle, D Crowfoot, 'The Crystal Structure of Cholesteryl Iodide'. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 184/996 (1945, 64. 1945-01-01T00:00:00+0000This was worked out by Dorothy Hodgkin and colleagues. Contrary to scientific opinion, the team showed that penicillin contained a beta-actam ring. Because wartime work on penicillin was secret, the structure of penicillin was only published in 1949. It appeared in D. Crowfoot, CW Bunn, BW Rogers-Low and A Turner Jones, The Chemistry of Penicillin (Princeton University Press, 1949) 310. 1945-05-01T00:00:00+0000King is a human geneticist who studies the interplay between genetics and the environment on human disease. She is best known for having identified BRCA1, a single gene responsible for many breast and ovarian cancers. Her technique for identifying the BRCA1 gene is now used for studying many other diseases. She was also responsible for the development of a technique, using mitrochondial DNA and human leucocyte antigen, for genetically identifying the remains of missing people. 1946-02-27T00:00:00+00001947-01-01T00:00:00+0000H E Alexander, G Leidy, 'Mode of action of streptomycin on type B H. Influenzae', Journal of Experimental Medicine, 85/4 (1985), 329-38.1947-05-31T00:00:00+0000Barré-Sinoussi is a virologist who shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for her contributions to identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. She carried out this work in the 1980s at the Pasteur Institute as part of her research into retroviruses. Barré-Sinoussi has been at the forefront of efforts to develop a vaccine against HIV and a cure for the disease. Serving as the president of the International AIDS Society between 2012 and 2016 and working with WHO, Barré-Sinoussi has collaborated closely with scientists from many resource-limited countries in Africa and Asia. 1947-07-30T00:00:00+0000This was based on McClintock's finding that two genes that controlled for pigmentation in maize could move along the chromosome to a different site and that these changes affected the behaviour of neighbouring genes. She suggested that this explained new mutations in pigmentation and other characteristics. 1948-01-01T00:00:00+0000Lindquist was a molecular biologist whose work on yeast proteins opened up new avenues for understanding gene functioning and degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's as well for drug resistance, cancer and prion biology. Most of her career was devoted to looking at how proteins change shape during cell division to carry out genetic functions. She demonstrated that protein-folding errors can occur in all species and that the biological changes this can cause can be passed from one offspring to the next without the need for RNA or DNA. Linquist was the first demale director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. 1949-06-05T00:00:00+0000Davies is the first woman to take on the role of Chief Medical Officer of England in the 165 years of its the position's history.1949-11-24T00:00:00+0000The lambda phage has become a key tool in molecular biology and is important for genetic engineering. It has the advantage that it can be easily grown in E Coli and is not pathogenic except in the case of bacteria. Lederberg's discovery paved the way to understanding the transfer of genetic material between bacteria, the mechanisms involved in gene regulation and how piece of DNA break apart and recombine to make new genes. EM Lederberg, 'Lysogenicity in Escherichia coli strain K-12', Microbial Genetics Bulletin, 1, (1950), 5-9. 1950-01-01T00:00:00+0000HE Alexander and G Leidy, 'Transformation of Type Specificity of H. influenzae,' American Pediatric Society, French Lick, May 10, 1950.1950-05-10T00:00:00+0000Noted by Salvador Luria and his graduate student Mary Human while conducting experiments into the break-up of DNA in phage-infected bateria.1952-01-01T00:00:00+0000By transferring tumours to chick embryos, Levi-Montalcini noticed that certain cancerous tissue caused extremely rapid growth of nerve cells. She described it as 'like rivulets of water flowing steadily over a bed of stones.' R Levi-Montalcini, 'Effects of mouse tumor transplantation on the nervous system', Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences, 55/2 (1952), 330-44.1952-08-08T00:00:00+0000The finding was made by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, American geneticists, while experimenting with the T2 bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria. They demonstrated that when bacteriophages, which are composed of DNA and protein, infect bacteria, their DNA enters the host bacterial cell, but most of their protein does not. Their work confirmed that DNA is the genetic material which refuted the long-held assumption that proteins carried the information for inheritance.1952-09-28T00:00:00+0000Hochmair-Desoyer is an electrical engineer who helped create the world's first micro-electric multi-channel cochlear implant. Developed in 1977, the implant enables the user to not only hear sounds but also to understand speech. Since 2000 Hochmair-Desoyer has co-founded a number of medical device companies working to help with hearing loss. In 2013 she was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. 1953-01-01T00:00:00+0000The drug emerged out of studies of organic compounds called purines conducted by Gertrude Elion with George Hitchings. Elion hypothesised that by preventing purines entering the metabolic pathway that leads to DNA synthesis it would be possible to stop the production of DNA and thereby stop cell growth. Elion synthesised a forerunner of 6-mercaptopurine in 1949, which was found to inhibit the growth of leukaemia in mice. 1953-01-01T00:00:00+0000One paper, published by Rosalind Franklin with her PhD student Ray Gosling, included an image produced with x-ray crystallography, which showed DNA to have regularly repeating helical structure. Known as photograph 51, this image had been previously been shown by Maurice Wilkins, without Franklin's permission, to James Watson, who, together with Francis Crick, used it to develop their double-helix model of DNA which was also published in Nature. Calculations from the photograph provided crucial parameters for the size of the helix and its structure, all of which were critical for Watson and Crick's molecular modelling work. Crick and Watson depicted DNA as having a double helix in which A always pairs with T, and C always with G. Their final model represented a correction of an earlier model in the light of comments made by Franklin that the hydrophilic backbones should not go at the centre of the molecule, as Watson and Crick had originally assumed, but go on the outside of the molecule where they could interact with water. The three papers were published in Nature, 171 (25 April 1953), 737-41.1953-04-25T00:00:00+0000Sabin was a pioneering American medical scientist who was the first woman to be appointed a full professor at Johns Hopkins University. She was also the first woman to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to head up a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. For many years she was involved in the investigation of the lymphatic system. She demonstrated that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins. She also made many discoveries relating to the origin and development of blood vessels and blood cells.1953-10-03T00:00:00+0000Known as contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), this process is essential for normal development and is needed for wound healing and responses to infection. Any disruption to the process can lead to or exacerbate human diseases like cancer, atherosclerosis and chronic inflammatory disorders. The CIL process was first observed by Michael Abercrombie and Joan Heaysman who published their work in 'Observations on the social behaviour of cells in tissue culture: II. ‘Monolayering’ of fibroblasts', Experimental Cell Research, 6 (1954), 293–306. 1954-01-01T00:00:00+0000The discovery was made by Paul C. Zamecnik with his colleagues Mahlon Hoagland and Mary Stephenson. tRNA is essential to protein synthesis. The molecule helps shuttle amino acids to the ribosome, the cell's protein factory. The work was subsequently published in MB Hoagland, ML Stephenson, JF Scott, ML Stephenson, LI Hecht, PC Zamecnik, 'A soluble ribonucleic acid intermediate in protein synthesis', Journal Biological Chemistry, 231 (1958), 241-57. 1956-01-01T00:00:00+00001956-01-01T00:00:00+0000Building on the work of her parents, Marie and Pierre Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie managed to produce radioactive nitrogen from boron, radioactive isotopes of phosphorus from aluminium, and silicon from magnesium. This facilitated the application of radioactive materials for use in medicine. In 1935 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for her work on radioactive isotopes which today form the basis of much biomedical research and cancer treatment today. 1956-03-17T00:00:00+0000The structure was worked out by Dorothy Hodgkin and her team using x-ray crystallography. The project was a major challenge because of the large size of the molecule and the fact that its atoms were largely unaccounted for. Dorothy Hodgkin, Jennifer Kamper, Maureen Mackay, Jennuy Pickworth, Kenneth N Trueblood, John G White, 'Structure of Vitamin B12', Nature, 178 (1956), 64-66. The achievement was described by Lawrence Bragg as significant 'as breaking the sound barrier'. It paved the way to the synthesis of the vitamin which is now given to patients with pernicious anaemia., 1956-07-14T00:00:00+0000Gerty Cori, nee Radnitz, was the third woman to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine and the first woman in America to do so. She shared the prize in 1947 with her husband Cari Cori, for discovering how the body metabolises glycogen, which is important to how the body stores energy. Born into a Jewish Czech family, Cori studied medicine at the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague, an unusual path for a woman at the time. Throughout her career Cori experienced difficulties because she was a woman. In 1921 she was threatened with dismissal by the director of Roswell Park Cancer Institute if she continued her collaborative research with her husband, Later she struggled to be appointed full-professor at Washington University St Louuis, a position she gained only months before she won the Nobel Prize.1957-10-26T00:00:00+0000Franklin was a British biophysicist who provided the first evidence of the double helix structure of DNA. She captured the structure in photo 51, an image she made of DNA using x-ray crystallography in 1952. Data from the photo was pivotal to Crick and Watson's building of their DNA double helical structure of DNA which they won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Sadly Franklin died too young, age 37, to receive the Nobel Prize for her work. 1958-04-16T00:00:00+0000A trained botanist and geologist, Stopes was the first female academic to get a position at the University of Manchester where she conducted research on plant palaeontology and coal classification. She is best known for her campaigning work to make birth control available to women. In 1921 she helped to open the first clinic in London that offered birth control advice and dispensed contraception to poor mothers.1958-10-02T00:00:00+0000Originally developed to measure insulin levels, the radioimmunoassay (RIA) provides a highly sensitive means of measuring incredibly low concentrations of many different substances in solutions. It does this by taking advantage of the antigen-antibody reaction and radioactive materials. The technique is now used for a variety of purposes, including screening for the hepatitis virus in blood, determining effective dosage levels of drugs and antibiotics, detecting foreign substances in the blood and correcting hormone levels in infertile couples. RS Yalolw, SA Berson, 'Assay of plasma in human subjects by immunological methods', Nature, 184 (1959), 1648-49. 1959-11-21T00:00:00+0000McClintock noticed the phenomenon during her experiments with maize. She reported her findings to the annual symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 1961-01-01T00:00:00+0000Greider is best known for her discovery of telomerase, an enzyme made up of protein and RNA subunits that help elongate and protect chromosomes. The enzyme is found in fetal tissues, adult germ cells and also tumour cells. Greider made the discovery in 1984 when she was a graduate student of Elizabeth Blackburn. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2009 on the back of this work. 1961-04-15T00:00:00+0000Lorraine Kraus incubated bone marrow cells from a patient with sickle-cell anaemia with DNA from healthy donor. L.M. Kraus, ‘Formation of different haemoglobins in tissue culture of human bone marrow treated with human deoxyribonucleic acid’, Nature, 4807 (1961) 1055-57. 1961-12-16T00:00:00+0000Werner Arber, Swiss microbiologist and geneticist, and his doctoral student Daisy Dussoix proposed that bacteria produce restriction and modification enzymes to counter invading viruses. They published their findings in 'Host specificity of DNA produced by Escherichia coli I and II', Journal Molecular Biology, 5 (1962), 18–36 and 37-49.1962-01-23T00:00:00+0000H Alexander and K Sprunt, 'Invasion of mammalian cells by ribonucleic acid (RNA) isolated from poliovirus', 10th International Congress of Pediatrics, Lisbon, Portugal, September 9-15, 1962.1962-09-01T00:00:00+0000The finding was based on 10 years of research conducted by Elizabeth Stern with 10,5000 women who used a family planning clinic in Los Angeles. E Stern, PM Neely, 'Carcinoma and Dysplasia of the Cervix: A comparison of rates for new and returning populations', Acta Cytol, 7 (1963), 357-61.1963-01-01T00:00:00+0000May-Britt Moser is best known the pioneering research she did with her husband, Edvard, on the brain's mechanism for representing space. In 2005 they discovered a type of nerve cell near the hippocampus that helps with navigation. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2014 on the back of this work. 1963-01-04T00:00:00+0000Dick originally trained as a zoologist and then completed a medical degree. She made her name studying scarlet fever after she herself caught the disease. In 1923 she and her husband George Dick, worked out that the disease was caused by a toxin released by a strain of Streptococcus bacteria. This enabled them to create an antitoxin for treatment and vaccine for prevention. She also devised a technique to prevent cross infection of scarlet fever among infants. Known as the Dick Aseptic Nursery Technique this promoted strict sterilisation and aseptic procedures.1963-08-21T00:00:00+00001964-02-19T00:00:00+0000Willis was a British haematologist who discovered a nutritional factor in yeast, now known as folic acid, which prevents and cures macrocytic anaemia, a life-threatening condition that can develop in pregnancy. The disease is particularly prevalent in poor women in the tropics who have inadequate diets. Willis made her discovery while working in India. Noticing that wealthy women seemed to suffer less from the symptoms of anaemia than poor women, Willis hypothesised that the disease was linked to nutrition. She found that liver supplements and Marmite, a spread high in vitamin B made from brewer's yeast could combat anaemia in rats. This led her to successfully treating anaemia in pregnant Indian women by using liver supplements and Marmite. Her results were published in 1931.1964-04-16T00:00:00+0000Witkin proposed that UV-induced block of cell-division was due to the inhibition of a DNA replication enzyme. EM Witkin, 'Photoreversal and dark repair of mutations to prototrophy induced by ultraviolet light in photoreactivable and non-photoreactivable strains of Escherichia coli', Mutat Res, 106 (1964), 22–36.1964-05-01T00:00:00+0000Hodgkin was awarded the Prize in recognition of the work she did to determine the three-dimensional structure of penicillin (1945) and Vitamin B12 (1948). She achieved this feat by advancing the technique of X-ray crystallography for use on proteins. Hodgkin was the third woman to win the Nobel Prize. She subsequently worked out the three-dimensional structure of insulin in 1969, a project that took her 35 years to complete. 1964-12-10T00:00:00+0000The book contained all protein sequences known to-date. It was the result of a collective effort led by Margaret Dayhoff to co-ordinate the ever-growing amount of information about protein sequences and their biochemical function. It provided the model for GenBank and many other molecular databases. 1965-01-01T00:00:00+0000Drug resistant bacteria were first identified in Japan and then in Britain. Some of the earliest observations of this phenomenon were made by Naomi Datta who in 1962-63 showed that structures with some similarity to phages could transfer drug-resistance genes. Ephraim Anderson, director of the Enteric Reference Laboratory in Colindale, London, subsequently showed that genetic factors endowing resistance to major drugs used against human disease could be transferred by plasmids from minor pathogens. A summary of the work was published in ES Anderson, 'Origin of transferable drug-resistance in the enterobacteriaceae', British Medical Journal, 27 Nov 1965, 1289-91. 1965-11-27T00:00:00+0000Allopurinol was originally developed by Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings. The drug works by inhibiting uric acid synthesis. 1966-08-01T00:00:00+0000Tu did this as part of the Chinese national project against malaria. In the first stage of the project her team investigated more than 2,000 Chinese herbal preparations and identified 640 with possible anti-malarial activities. More than 380 were evaluated in a mouse model of malaria. 1967-01-01T00:00:00+0000McCormick was one of the first American women to earn a biology degree from MIT. She went on to become a prominent suffragist and philanthropist who played a significant role in the development of the first oral contraceptive pill. She provided $2 million of her own money for the development of the pill, first approved for gynaecological disorders in 1957. McCormick continued to provide funding to improve birth control once the pill was approved.1967-12-28T00:00:00+0000The drug was developed by Gertrude Elion in 1957 as part of her development of purine analogues. 1968-03-01T00:00:00+0000Alexander was an American paediatrician and microbiologist. In the 1940s she developed the first effective treatment against Haemophilus influenzae (Hib), a major killer of infants. Her treatment helped reduce mortality from the disease from nearly 100 per cent to less than 25 per cent. It involved the combination of antiserum therapy with sulfa drugs. Alexander was also one of the first scientists to identify and study antibiotics resistance, which emerged out of her search for antibiotics to treat Hib. She worked out that the resistance was due to random genetic mutations in DNA that were positively selected through evolution.1968-06-24T00:00:00+0000Sharma is a leading figure in the field of cancer immunology. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms and pathways within the immune system that are responsible for tumour rejection so as to improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies. She was the first to show the importance of the inducible co-stimulator (ICOS) protein in the destruction of cancer cells. 1970-06-26T00:00:00+0000Brigette Askonas, a Canadian biochemist, Alan Williamson, a British immunologist, and Brian Wright cloned B cells in vivo using spleen cells from mice immunised with haptenated carrier antigen. BA Askonas, AR Williamson, BEG Wright, 'Selection of a single antibody-forming cell clone and its propagation in syngeneic mice', PNAS, 67/3 (1970), 1398-14031970-11-01T00:00:00+0000This was done in Dale Kaiser's laboratory by Douglas Berg together with Janet Mertz and David Jackson1971-01-01T00:00:00+0000Robert Pollack contacted Paul Berg to raise concerns about the potential biohazards of experiments Mertz, his doctoral research student, planned to do involving the introduction of genes from the oncovirus SV40 in the human gut bacteria, E. Coli. Following this Berg self-imposed a moratorium on experiments in his laboratory involving the cloning of SV40 in E-Coli.1971-06-01T00:00:00+0000The technique uses antibodies to detect antibodies. It was first conceived by two Swedish scientists, Peter Perlman and Eva Engvall at Stockholm University. They published their method in 1971 as 'Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Quantitative assay of immunoglobulin G', Immunochemistry, 8/9, 871-4. 1971-09-01T00:00:00+0000The power of restriction enzymes to cut DNA was demonstrated by Kathleen Danna, a graduate student, with Daniel Nathans, her doctoral supervisor, at Johns Hopkins University. They published the technique in 'Specific cleavage of simian virus 40 DNA by restriction endonuclease of Hemophilus influenzae', PNAS USA, 68/12 (1971), 2913-17.1971-12-01T00:00:00+00001972-01-01T00:00:00+0000This followed positive results from clinical trials showing it could be effective for treating malaria. 1972-01-01T00:00:00+0000It was based on their finding that when DNA is cleaved with EcoRI, a restriction enzyme, it has sticky ends. JE Mertz, RW Davis, 'Cleavage of DNA by RI restriction endonuclease generates cohesive ends', PNAS, 69, 3370–3374 (1972). 1972-11-01T00:00:00+00001973-01-01T00:00:00+0000The phenomenon was worked out by Evelyn Witkin with Miroslav Radman. They showed that the repair is induced DNA damage which activates a co-ordinated cellular response. Their key papers on the matter were EM Witkin, DL George, 'Ultraviolet mutagenesis in polA and UvrA polA derivatives of Escherichia coli B-R: evidence for an inducible error-prone repair system', Genetics, 73/Suppl 73 (1973), 91–10; M Radman, 'SOS repair hypothesis: Phenomenology of an inducible DNA repair which is accompanied by mutagenesis', Basic Life Science, 5A (1975), 355–67; EM Witkin, 'Ultraviolet mutagenesis and inducible DNA repair in Escherichia coli', Bacteriol Review, 40/4 (1976), 869–907. 1973-01-01T00:00:00+0000The work was carried out by Stanley Cohen and Annie Chang at Stanford University in collaboration with Herbert Boyer and Robert Helling at the University of California San Francisco. They managed to splice sections of viral DNA and bacterial DNA with the same restriction enzyme to create a plasmid with dual antibiotic resistance. They then managed to insert this recombinant DNA molecule into the DNA of bacteria to express the new recombinant DNA. The technique showed it was possible to reproduce recombinant DNA in bacteria. It was published in SN Cohen, ACY Chang, HW Boyer, RB Belling, 'Construction of Biologically Functional Bacterial Plasmids In Vitro', PNAS USA, 10/11 (1973), 3240-3244. 1973-11-01T00:00:00+0000Apgar was an American obstetrical anaesthesiologist who introduced the first test for assessing the health of newborn babies in 1953. Known as the Apgar Score. this test assesses the baby's heart rate, respiration, colour, muscle tone and reflect irritability. During the rubella pandemic of 1964-65, Apgar became a strong advocate for universal vaccination to prevent mother to child transmission of the disease. She also promoted the effective use of Rh testing to identify women at risk of transmitting maternal antibodies against they placenta which can cause life-threatening anaemia in the baby. Apgar was the first woman to head a specialty division at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.1974-08-07T00:00:00+0000Her thesis focused on methods to isolate and characterise mutant variants of SV40 1975-01-01T00:00:00+0000The work was conducted by a team led by Brigette Askonas. It was published in AJ McMichael, A Ting, HJ Zweerink, BA Askonas, 'HLA restriction of cell-mediated lysis of influenza virus-infected human cells', Nature, 270/5637 (1977), 524-6; AJ McMichael, BA Askonas, 'Influenza virus-specific cytotoxic T cells in man; induction and properties of the cytotoxic cell', European Journal Immunolology, 8 (1978), 705-11.1977-01-01T00:00:00+0000The method, known as the oocyte stem, was developed by Janet Mertz together with John Gurdon and Edward M DeRobertis. It was published in EM. De Robertis, JB. Gurdon, GA. Partington, JE Mertz, RA, 'Injected amphibian oocytes: a living test tube for the study of eukaryotic gene transcription?', Biochemistry Society Symposium, 42 (1977),181-91.1977-01-01T00:00:00+0000The cloning, achieved by Beverly Griffin with Tomas Lindahl, was announced to a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor1979-01-01T00:00:00+0000The identity of the blood stem cell, especially that in the human, and even its existence remains the subject of debate because the cell is difficult to isolate. Those involved in the debate include the Manchester group (Dexter, Lord) and American groups (Weissmann and Morrison). Part of the problem is that techniques for studying the human blood stem cell lagged behind that of animal models. 1980-01-01T00:00:00+0000Conducted by a team led by Beverly Griffin, the project's completion was a major achievement. It was one of the largest tracts of eukaryotic DNA sequenced up to this time. The work was published in E Soeda, JR Arrand, N Smolar, JE Walsh, BE Griffin, ‘Coding potential and regulatory signals of the polyoma virus genome’, Nature, 283 (1980) 445-53.1980-01-01T00:00:00+0000Stern was the first to describe how a healthy cell changes into a cancerous cell. She showed that a normal cell goes through 250 distinct stages before it become cancerous. Stern's work helped transform cervical cancer into an easily diagnosed and treatable condition. She also demonstrated the links between the herpes simplex virus and cervical cancer and between cervical cancer and the oral contraceptive pill. 1980-08-18T00:00:00+0000The database was started by Margaret Dayhoff at the NBRF in the mid 1960s and comprised over 200,000 residues. Within a month of its operation more than 100 scientists had requested access to the database. The database was funded with contributions from m Genex, Merck, Eli Lilly, DuPont, Hoffman–La Roche, and Upjohn, and computer time donated by Pfizer Medical Systems.1980-09-15T00:00:00+0000The device was developed by the husband and wife team Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair with the goal of enabling the user not only to hear sounds but also to understand speech. The implant has a long, flexible electrode which allows for the delivery of electric signals to the auditory nerve along a large part of the cochlear. 1980-12-15T00:00:00+0000Youyou Tu and her team presented their paper 'Studies on the Chemistry of Qinghaosu', which outlined the efficacy of artemisinin and its derivatives in treating several thousand patients infected with malaria in China. The work attracted worldwide attention. 1981-01-01T00:00:00+0000The work, led by Beverly Griffin, opened up the possibility of sequencing the virus. It was published in J R Arrand, L. Rymo, J E Walsh, E Bjorck, T Lindahl and B E Griffin, ‘Molecular cloning of the complete Epstein-Barr virus genome as a set of overlapping restriction endonuclease fragments’, Nucleic Acids Research, 9/13 (1981), 2999-2014.1981-07-10T00:00:00+0000The drug was originally synthesised by Howard Schaeffer and then worked on by Gertrude Elion and her team at the Wellcome Research Laboratories. Elion's group worked out the metabolism of the drug and how it coluld attack the herpes virus. Their work opened up further research on enzyme differences in normal and virus-infected cells that paved the way to the development of other antiviral drugs. 1982-03-29T00:00:00+0000Dayhoff is known as the founder of bioinformatics. This she did by pioneering the application of mathematics and computational techniques to the sequencing of proteins and nucleic acids and establishing the first publicly available database for research in the area. 1983-02-05T00:00:00+0000Two teams of scientists publish methods for the generation of chimeric monoclonal antibodies, that is antibodies possessing genes that are half-human and half mouse. Each team had developed their techniques separate from each other. The first team was lead by Michael Neuberger together with Terence Rabbitts and other colleagues at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. The second team consisted of Sherie Morrison and colleagues at Stanford University together with Gabrielle Boulianne and others at the University of Toronto. 1984-12-01T00:00:00+0000The scientists found the enzyme in the model organism Tetrahymena thermophila, a fresh-water protozoan with a large number of telomeres. CW Greider, EH Blackburn, 'Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts', Cell. 43 (2 Pt 1) (1985), 405–13.1984-12-01T00:00:00+0000The experiments, carried out in mice by Brigette Askobas and her colleagues, showed that T cells transferred into RSV infected mice showed that the T cells could protect against viral replication, eliminating residual virus from immunosuppressed mice. It also showed that T cells could at the same time cause enhanced lung disease that could be leathal. MJ Cannon, EJ Stott, G Taylor, BA Askonas, 'Clearance of persistent respiratory syncytial virus infections in immunodeficient mice following transfer of primed T cells', Immunology, 62 (1987), 133-38; MJ Cannon, PJ Openshaw, BA Askonas, 'Cytotoxic T cells clear virus but augment lung pathology in mice infected with respiratory syncytial virus', Journal Experimental Medicine, 168/3 (1988), 1163-8.1987-04-30T00:00:00+00001988-01-01T00:00:00+0000JA Doudna, BP Cormack, JW Szostak, 'RNA Structure, Not Sequence, Determines the 5? Splice-Site Specificity of a Group I Intron', PNAS, 86/19 (1989), 7402-06.1989-10-01T00:00:00+0000The was determined by a team led by Marie-Claire King who conducted a genetic analysis of 23 extended families, a total of 329 relatives. J Hall, M Lee, B Newman, J Morrow, L Anderson, B Huey, M King, 'Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21', Science, 250/4988 (1990): 1684–89. 1990-12-01T00:00:00+0000Seibert was an American biochemist whose isolation of a pure form of tuberculin (a protein substance from the tuberculosis-causing bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in the 1930s paved the way to her development of the first reliable TB test. Devised at the University of Uppsala, Seibert's test, which is carried out on the skin, was adopted as the standard TB test in the United States in 1941 and by the World Health Organisation in 1952. Her test is still in use today. Prior to her work on TB, Seibert invented a new distillation process for intravenous injections that eliminated all bacteria. She developed the technique during her doctorate after finding that intravenous injections contaminated with distilled water could cause fevers in patients.1991-08-23T00:00:00+0000Gwei-djen was a Chinese biochemist who undertook pioneering work on metabolic pathways. In 1933, Gwei-djen took the bold decision to leave China, then isolated from the West, to study for a doctorate at Cambridge University where she remained for the rest of her career. By 1939 she had developed the first sensitive assay for detecting low levels of pyruvic acid, an intermediate involved in the breakdown of carbohydrates. Her work demonstrated that the levels of pyruvic acid could be raised by vitamin B1 deficiency and exercise. Gwei-djen worked closely with both Dorothy and Joseph Needham. Together with Joseph she compiled a series of books detailing Chinese achievements in science and technology. 1991-11-28T00:00:00+0000McClintock was a pioneer in the field of cytogenetics, a branch of genetics concerned with how chromosomes affect cell behaviour. Based on her investigation of how chromosomes change in reproduction in maize she demonstrated in the late 1920s that genes can shift to different locations by themselves. In the 1940s and 1950s she showed that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off, a process called transposition. Initially scientists were sceptical of her findings so she stopped publishing her data in 1953. By the 1960s and 1970s attitudes towards her work changed as more scientists made similar findings. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her work.1992-09-02T00:00:00+0000Hobby was an American microbiologist whose work was pivotal to scaling up the production of penicillin in World War II and the development of other antibiotics. She first became involved in work on nonpathogenic organisms when doing her doctorate at Columbia University in 1935. From 1934 to 1943 Hobby worked for Presbyterian Hospital and the Columbia Medical School. Thereafter she went to work for Pfizer Pharamceuticals in New York where she conducted research on streptomycin and other antibiotics. She founded the monthly publication 'Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy' in 1972 and published 'Penicillin: Meeting the Challenge' in 1985. 1993-07-04T00:00:00+0000Dorothy Hodgkin, was a British chemist who pioneered protein crystallography, a technique the uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three dimensional structure of protein crystals. She used the technique to confirm the structure of penicillin, in 1945, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Hodgkin was the third woman to win the Nobel Prize. In addition to penicillin, Hodgkin published the first structure of a steroid and deciphered the structure of vitamin B12 and insulin. Her protein crystallography technique is now an essential tool for research into structural biology.1994-07-29T00:00:00+0000The belief that adult stem cells, especially the blood stem cell, can give rise to cells such as brain, liver and cardiac gives rise to notion that adult stem cells could be used like embryonic counterparts for regenerative therapies, helping in degenerative diseases of the brain and heart. This marks a paradigm shift as it goes against dogma from decades of research and clinical success with the blood stem cell. 1996-01-01T00:00:00+0000The work was led by Padmanee Sharma. The team's finding appeared in P. Sharma et al, ‘Thymus-leukaemia antigen interacts with T cells and self-peptides’, Journal Immunology, 156 (1996), 987-96.1996-02-01T00:00:00+0000Koshland was an American immunologist who was a major pioneer in the field of antibodies. Her work was instrumental in showing antibodies to be discrete entities and knowledge about the origins of antibody specificity. In the 1960s, she demonstrated that the efficiency and effectiveness with which antibodies can combat foreign invaders is determined by their different amino acid compositions. By the 1990s she had unravelled the process that accompanies and directs B cell activation and maturation. A major role-model for other women scientists, Koshland was nearly not awarded her PhD because her professor thought it would be a waste because she was pregnant. 1997-10-28T00:00:00+0000Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist renowned for developing new methods to design drugs that made took advantage of the biochemical differences between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents). The aim was to create a drug capable of killing or inhibiting the reproduction of pathogens without harming healthy cells. Elion helped develop a number of drugs for a variety of diseases, including leukaemia and malaria. One of her most notable achievements was the creation of the first immunosuppressive drug for organ transplant patients. In 1988 she was joined awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 'discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.'1999-02-21T00:00:00+0000N Krauzewicz, K Stokrova, C Jenkins, M Elliott, CF Higgns, BE Griffin, ‘Virus-like gene transfer to cell nuclei mediated by polyoma virus pseudocapsids’, Gene Therapy, 7 (2000), 2122-31.2000-01-02T00:00:00+0000The work was led by Ada Yonath using x-ray crystallography. This was a major achievement given the hundreds of thousands of atoms that ribosomes contain. Ribosomes help build proteins in the body. The work has led to many applications, including for the production of antibiotics. F Schlunzen, R Zarivach, J Harms, A Bashan, A Ticilj, R Albrecht, A Yonath, F Franceschi, 'Structural basis for the interaction of antibiotics with the peptidyl transferase centre in eubacteria', Nature, 413 (2001), 814-21. 2001-10-25T00:00:00+0000J Harms, F Schluenzen, R Zarivach et al, 'High resolution structure of the large ribosomal subunit from a mesophilic eubacterium,' Cell, 107 (2001), 679-88; PMID:11733066.2001-11-30T00:00:00+0000Vogt was a German pharmacologist who left Nazi Germany for Britain where she became one of the leading neuroscientists of the twentieth century. Her most important contribution was advancing knowledge about the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. She demonstrated that the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine enable brain cells to communicate. In 1954 she published a paper on sympathin which helped to establish the important role of amines in the brain and paved the way to the development of modern anti-depressant therapy. 2003-09-09T00:00:00+0000Daly trained as a biochemist and was the first Black American woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry (from Columbia University, 1947). Her early research looked at the effects of cholesterol on the mechanisms of the heart, the effects sugars and other nutrients on the health of the arteries and the impact of advanced aged and hypertension on the circulatory system. This she did at Rockefeller Institute in New York. She subsequently joined Columbia University where she investigated how proteins are produced and organised in the cell. In addition to her scientific work, Daly was an ardent campaigner for getting minority students into medical school and graduate science programmes.2003-10-28T00:00:00+0000Padmanee Sharma et al, ‘Frequency of NY-ESO-1 and LAGE-1 expression in bladder cancer and evidence of a new NY-ESO-1 T-cell epitope in a patient with bladder cancer’, Cancer Immunology, 3 (Dec 13 2003), 19.2003-12-13T00:00:00+0000The finding was made by the husband and wife team May-Britt Moser and Edvard I Moser together with John O'Keefe after conducting experiments with rats. They found that when a rat developed nerve cells that form a co-ordinate system for navigation when they passed certain points on a hexagonal grid. The teams work laid the foundation for new understandings about the cognitive processes and spacial deficits associated with neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease. 2005-01-01T00:00:00+0000A team at Harvard Stem Cell Institute reported fusing adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells to reset the culture so that the cells behave like embryonic stem cells. The researchers did the work using pelvic bone cells as the somatic cells and a different human embryonic cell line. Chad A Cowan, Jocelyn Alenza, Douglas A Melton, Kevin Eggan, 'Nuclear reprogramming of somatic cells after fusion with human embryonic stem cells', Science, 309/5739 (2005), 1369-73. 2005-08-25T00:00:00+0000This was first observed by Padmanee Sharma. Her findings provided an important pathway for improving the clinical efficacy of anti-CTLA-4 therapy. They were first published Chrysoula I Liakou, Ashish Kamat, Derek Ng Tang, Hong Chen, Jingjing Sun, Patricia Troncoso, Christopher Logothetis, and Padmanee Sharma, ‘CTLA-4 blockade increases IFNgamma-producing CD4+ICOShi T cells to shift the ratio of effector to regulatory T cells in cancer patients’, PNAS USA, 105/39 (Sept 2008), 14987-92.2006-01-01T00:00:00+0000Lederberg is best known for having discovered the lambda phage, an indispensable tool for studying gene regulation and genetic recombination. She also invented the replica plating technique which is pivotal to tracking antibiotic resistance. 2006-11-11T00:00:00+0000Chatterjee was an Indian organic chemist who was the first woman to receive a doctorate in science from an Indian university - Calcutta University. Most of her work concentrated on researching various alkaloid compounds. She is best known for her discovery of the anti-epileptic activity of Marsilea minuta, an aquatic fern, which led to the development of the an epilepsy drug called Ayush-56. Chatterjee also found the anti-malarial properties of the plants Alstonia scholaris, Swertia chirata, Picrorhiza kurroa and Caesalpinia crista which led to antimalarial drugs.2006-11-22T00:00:00+0000McLaren was a major pioneer in the development of IVF. She was also the key architect behind the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Act (1990) which provided the world’s first legal guidelines for infertility treatment and all human embryo research. Following this Act, McLaren served for 10 years on the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, established in 1991, and became a critical player in debates about the governance of embryonic stem cells for therapy. She also made history in 1991 by becoming the Royal Society’s first woman officer. 2007-07-07T00:00:00+0000Saruhashi is renowned for being the first scientist to demonstrate the dangers of radioactive fallout in seawater that resulted from nuclear bomb testing in 1954. Her evidence was later used to prevent further nuclear testing by governments. Despite her achievement, she suffered discrimination as a woman scientist. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1957. Convinced that technical expertise was the key to women's independence she established the Society of Japanese Scientists in 1958 to promote women in science.2007-09-29T00:00:00+0000June Almeida was a major pioneer of electron microscopy which helped transform knowledge about virology. She is best known for taking the first electron micrograph of the rubella virus and a human coronavirus. Her work also helped uncover the structure of the hepatitis B virus which paved the way to developing a vaccine against hepatitis B. She also published some of the first high quality images of HIV. 2007-12-01T00:00:00+0000Datta was a British microbial geneticist who showed that multi-antibiotic resistance was transferred between bacteria by plasmids. She first made the connection in 1959 after investigating a severe outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium phage-type 27 at Hammersmith Hospital where she worked. This involved an examination of 309 cultures, of which she found 25 were drug resistant, eight of which were resistant to Streptomycin which had been used to treat the patients. She concluded that the antibiotic resistance developed over time because the earlier cultures of the salmonella typhimurium infection (from the start of the outbreak) were not drug resistant. 2008-11-30T00:00:00+0000The idea of using gene therapy to treat vision loss in patients with multiple sclerosis emerged out of an investigation of the molecular change in synapses in the visual system by Dorothy Schafer and her colleagues. They found that in the case of demyelinating disease like MS, there was an abundance of the protein CD3 in the synapses, which is responsible for sending signals microglia to eliminate otherwise healthy-seeming synapses. The aim of gene therapy would be to deliver an inhibitor of C3 to synapses in the visual system to help protect the cells or tissue from unwanted attack by the immune system. S.Werneberg et al, 'Targeted complement inhibition at synapses prevents microglial synaptic engulfment and synapse loss in demyelinating disease', Immunity, 52/1 (2020), 167-82, e7.2010-01-14T00:00:00+0000Yalow was an American medical physicist who made her name by helping to develop the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique. RIA uses two reagents. One is a radioisotope atom bound to a molecule of the target substance and the other is an antibody that will bind to the target substance when the two are in contact. Measurements are taken of the initial radioactivity of the mixture which is then added to a measured quantity of fluid, such as blood, that contains low concentrations of an unknown target substance. The test takes advantage of the fact that antibodies prefer to attach to non-radioactive molecules. Measurements are taken of the reduction in radioactivity of the antibody reagent to calculate the concentration of the target substance. The RIA method is now an important component in diagnostic tests, being used to measure the concentration of hormones, vitamins, viruses, enzymes, drugs and other substances. The technique transformed the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes and other hormonal problems related to growth, thyroid function and fertility. It is used to test for phenylketonuria in newborn babies, a rare inherited disorder that if left untreated can lead to intellectual disability, seizures, behavioural problems and mental disorder. In 1977 Yalow became the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize for the physiology or medicine category. It was awarded on the basis of her RIA work. 2011-05-30T00:00:00+0000The patent was submitted by Jennifer Doudna, at the University of California Berkeley, and Emmanuell Charpentier, at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany. The application was for a patent to cover the use of CRISPR-Cas9 for genome editing in vitro.2012-05-25T00:00:00+0000M Jinek, K Chylinski, I Fonfara, M Hauer, J A Doudna, E Charpentier, 'A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity', Science, 337/6096 (2012): 816-21.2012-08-17T00:00:00+0000Levi-Montalcini is best known for sharing the Nobel Prize in 1986 for helping to discover and isolate the nerve growth factor which helps regulate the growth, maintenance, proliferation and survival of certain neurons. Banned by Mussolini from working in academia because she was Jewish, Levi-Montalcini conducted much of her early work in a makeshift laboratory in her bedroom. She later became the director of the Research Center of Neurobiology and the Laboratory of Cellular Biology in Washington University and founded the European Brain Research Institute. 2012-12-30T00:00:00+0000Askonas was a leading figure in immunology whose work helped to establish the basic mechanisms and components of immune system. Together with colleagues she developed one of the first systems for the cloning of antibody-forming B cells in vivo, some of the earliest monoclonal antibodies. She was also one of the first scientists to isolate and clone virus specific T lymphocytes, laying the foundation for defining different influenza sub-sets and improving vaccines. 2013-01-09T00:00:00+0000Team of scientists led by Kathy Niakan based at Francis Crick Institute in London sought permission from UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to use gene editing techniques like CRISPR-Cas on embryos less than 2 weeks old. Research designed to understand why some women lose their babies before term. 2015-09-18T00:00:00+00002015-10-05T00:00:00+0000Griffin was a leading expert on viruses that cause cancer. She was the first woman appointed to Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital. In 1980 she completed the sequence of the poliovirus, the longest piece of eukaryotic DNA to be sequenced at that time. She devoted her life to understanding the Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of Burkitt's Lymphoma, a deadly form of cancer. 2016-06-13T00:00:00+0000The work was undertaken by a group of researchers at the University of Edinburgh led by Evelyn Telfer. It involved taking tiny pieces of ovarian tissue from 10 women undergoing elective caesarean surgery extracting priorial follicles, small structures that have the potential to release an egg, which were then placed in a nutrient-rich liquid to grow. The team then carefully removed the fragile, immature eggs and some surrounding cells from the follicles and placed them on a special membrane with the addition of growth-supporting proteins so that they could grow to become the size you would see of an egg during ovulation. Most of the eggs failed to grow, but 10% completed their journey to maturity - that is they were able to divide and halve their chromosomes so they were ready to be fertilised by sperm. The work was published in M McLaughlin, DF Albertini, WHB Wallace, RA Anderson, EE Telfer, Molecular Human Reproduction, 24/3 (March 2018) 135-42. DOI: 10.1093/molehr/gay002. 2018-01-30T00:00:00+0000Doudna and Charpentier's development of the CRISPR/Cas9 method together with other colleagues has radically transformed the process for gene editing. Enabling genetic engineering to be carried out on an unprecedented scale at very low cost, CRISPR/Cas9 is now exploited for a wide range of applications ranging from agriculture through to human health. 2020-10-07T00:00:00+0000
Date Event People Places
3 Feb 1821Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, EnglandBlackwell 
19 Jun 1836Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was bornGarrett AndersonRoyal Free Hospital
8 Sep 1857Ida H Hyde was born in Davenport, Iowa, USAHydeHeidelberg University, University of Kansas, University of Berne, Radcliffe College
17 Jun 1865Susan LaFlesche Picotte was born on the Omaha Reservation, USALaFlesche Picotte  
7 Nov 1867Marie Curie, nee Sklodowska, born in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland)CurieWarsaw
21 Nov 1868Martha Wollstein was born in New York City, USAWollsteinRockefeller Institute for Medical Research
9 Nov 1871Florence R Sabin was born in Colorado, USAFlorence Sabin 
27 Aug 1875Katherine McCormick bornMcCormickMassachusetts Institute of Technology
15 Oct 1880Marie Stopes was born in Edinburgh, ScotlandStopesManchester University
18 Dec 1881Gladys Rowena H Dick was born in Pawnee City, Nebraska, USAGladys Dick University of Chicago, John R. McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, St Luke's Hospital
10 May 1888Lucy Willis was born in Sutton Coldfield, United KingdomWillisRoyal Free Hospital, Haffkine Institute
24 Jul 1892Alice A Ball was born in Seattle, Washington, USABallUniversity of Hawaii
1897Marie Curie hypothesised that radiation came from the atom and not from the interaction of molecules.Curie 
1897 - 1899Marie Curie devised methods for measuring radioactivityCurie 
6 Oct 1897Florence B Seibert was born in Easton, PA, USASeibertYale University, University of Uppsala, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania
1898Marie Curie, together with her husband Pierre, discovered polonium and radium, two new elementsCurie 
April 1898Marie Curie coined the term 'radioactivity'Curie 
5 Apr 1901Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was born in New York City, USAAlexanderColumbia University
16 Jun 1902Barbara McClintock was born in Hartford CT, USAMcClintockUniversity of Missouri
8 Sep 1903Marthe L Vogt was born in Berlin, GermanyVogtNational Institute for Medical Research
10 Dec 1903Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel PrizeCurie 
22 Jul 1904Lu Gwei-djen was born in Nanjing, Qing ChinaGwei-djen University of Cambridge
1905Nettie Stevens showed that sex is inherited by a chromosomal factor and that males determine the gender of offspringStevens 
4 Oct 1906Alice M Stewart was born in Sheffield, UKStewartOxford University
22 Apr 1909Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, ItalyLevi-MontalciniWashington University
7 Jun 1909Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, NJ, USAApgarColumbia University
12 May 1910Dorothy M Crowfoot Hodgkin was born in Cairo, EgyptD HodgkinCairo, Egypt
31 May 1910Elizabeth Blackwell diedBlackwell 
19 Nov 1910Gladys Lounsbury Hobby was bornHobbyColumbia University, Pfizer
1911Marie Curie published the standard for radiumCurie 
1914Marie Curie developed small, mobile x-ray units for the diagnosis of injuries at the battlefront in World War ICurie 
18 Sep 1915Susan LaFlesche Picotte diedLaFlesche Picotte 
19 Sep 1915Elizabeth Stern was born in Cobalt, Ontario, CanadaSternUniversity of California Los Angeles
31 Dec 1916Alice A Ball diedBallUniversity of Hawaii
23 Sep 1917Asima Chatterjee was born in Bengal, IndiaChatterjeeUniversity of Calcutta
17 Dec 1917Elizabeth Garrett Anderson diedGarrett AndersonRoyal Free Hospital
23 Jan 1918Gertrude B Elion was born in New York NY, USAElionWellcome Research Laboratories
22 Mar 1920Katsuko Saruhashi was born in Tokyo, JapanSaruhashi 
25 Jul 1920Rosalind E Franklin was born in London, UKFranklinKings College London
9 Mar 1921Evelyn Witkin was born in New York City, USAWitkinNew York City
16 Apr 1921Marie M Daly was born in Corona, Queens, NY, USAMary DalyRockefeller Institute, Columbia University
19 Jul 1921Rosalyn Yalow was born in New York, USAYalowVeterans Administration Hospital
25 Oct 1921Marian E Koshland was born in New Haven, Connecticut, USAKoshland 
17 Sep 1922Naomi Datta was born in London, UKDattaHammersmith Hospital
18 Dec 1922Esther Lederberg was born in Bronx, New York, USAEsther LederbergWisconsin University
1 Apr 1923Brigitte Askonas was born in Vienna, AustriaAskonasVienna
11 Mar 1925Margaret Dayhoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USADayhoffPhiladelphia
26 Apr 1927Anne McLaren was born in London, UKMcLarenUniversity College London, Edinburgh University, Cambridge University
1929Carl and Gerty Cori outlined the body's metabolic pathway to break down some carbohydrates, like glycogen, and synthesise othersCarl Cori, Gerty CoriRoswell Park Cancer Institute
8 Oct 1929Franklin W Stahl was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USAStahl California Institute of Technology, University of Missouri, University of Oregon
23 Jan 1930Beverly Griffin was born in Delhi, Louisiana, USAGriffinImperial College
5 Oct 1930June Almeida was born in Glasgow, ScotlandAlmeidaHammersmith Postgraduate Medical School
30 Dec 1930Tu Youyou was born in Zhejiang, ChinaYouyouPeking University Medical School
August 1931Barbara McClintock and Harriet Creighton, her graduate student, provided first experimental proof that genes are positioned on chromosomesMcClintock, CreightonCornell University
1934Irène Joliot-Curie and Frederic Joliot, her husband, created radioactive nitrogen out of boronJoliot-Curie 
4 Jul 1934Marie Curie diedCurieUniversity of Paris, Radium Institute
1939Human occytes shown to complete meiosis in vitroPincus, SaundersHarvard University
22 Jun 1939Ada E Yonath was born in Jerusalem, Palestine (now Israel)YonathWeizmann Institute
30 Sep 1939Martha Wollstein diedWollsteinRockefeller Institute for Medical Research
1 Oct 1939Hattie Alexander reported the first successful cure of infant suffering from influenzal meningitis AlexanderColumbia University
September 1940First fermentation work on penicillin undertaken in the US to up-scale productionDawson, Hobby, MeyerColumbia University
1944Evelyn Witkin discovered radiation resistance in bactieraWitkinCold Spring Harbor Laboratory
1945First three-dimensional structure of a steroid (cholesteryl iodide) publishedD Hodgkin, CarlisleOxford University
May 1945Structure of penicillin determined using x-ray crystallographyD Hodgkin, Bunn, Rogers-Low, Turner JonesOxford University
27 Feb 1946Mary-Claire King was born in Illinois, USAKingIllinois
1947Dorothy Hodgkin elected to Royal SocietyD Hodgkin 
31 May 1947Hattie Alexander and Grace Leidy report antimicrobial resistance in patients treated with streptomycin for H. InfluenzaeAlexander, LeidyColumbia University
30 Jul 1947Francoise Barré-Sinoussi born in Paris, FranceBarre-SinoussiPasteur Institute
1948 - 1950McClintock developed her theory of genetic transpositionMcClintockCold Spring Harbor Laboratory
5 Jun 1949Susan Lindquist was born in Chicago, Illiniois, USALinquistMassachusetts Institute of Technology
24 Nov 1949Sally Davies bornDavies 
January 1950Esther Lederberg discovered the lambda phageEsther LederbergUniversity of Wisconsin
10 May 1950Hattie E Alexander and Grace Leidy reported success using DNA to alter the hereditary characteristics of Hemophilus influenzaeAlexander, LeidyColumbia University
1952First observation of the modification of viruses by bacteriaLuria, HumanUniversity of Illinois
1952Rita Levi-Montalcini announced isolation of nerve-growth factorLevi-MontalciniWashington University in St. Louis
28 Sep 1952Experiments proved DNA, and not proteins, hold the genetic codeHershey, ChaseCarnegie Institution of Washington
1 Jan 1953Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer was born in Vienna, AustriaHochmair-DesoyerVienna, Austria
1953FDA approved 6-mercaptopurine as treatment for childhood leukaemiaElion, HitchingWellcome Research Laboratories
25 Apr 1953Nature published three papers showing the molecular structure of DNA to be a double helixFranklin, Gosling, Crick, Watson, Wilkins. Stokes, WilsonBirkbeck College, Kings College London, Cambridge University
3 Oct 1953Florence Sabin diedFlorence Sabin 
1954Cells observed to stop moving on contact with other cells Abercrombie, HeaysmanUniversity College London
1956Transfer RNA (tRNA) discoveredZamecnik, Hoagland, Stephenson,Harvard University
1956Alice Stewart demonstrated the link between x-rays of pregnant women and childhood cancerStewart 
17 Mar 1956Irène Joliot-Curie diedJoliot-Curie 
14 Jul 1956Complete structure of vitamin B12 publishedHodgkin, Kamper, MacKay, Pickworth, Trueblood, WhiteOxford University
26 Oct 1957Gerty Theresa Cori diedG CoriWashington University in St Louis
16 Apr 1958Rosalind E Franklin diedFranklinKings College London
2 Oct 1958Marie Stopes diedStopesUniversity of Manchester, University College London
21 Nov 1959Rosalyn Yalow and Soloman Berson published the radioimmunoassay method opening up a new era in immunology and diagnosticsYalow, BersonVeterans Administration Hospital
1961'Jumping genes', transposable elements, discovered by Barbara McClintockMcLintockCold Spring Harbor Laboratory
15 Apr 1961Carol W Greider was born in San Diego CA, USAGreiderJohns Hopkins University
16 Dec 1961First successful direct incorporation of functional DNA into a human cellKrausUniversity of Tennessee
23 Jan 1962Idea of restriction and modification enzymes bornArber, DussoixUniversity of Geneva
September 1962Hattie Alexander and Katherine Sprunt demonstrated that the RNA of the poliovirus can independently infect human cells Alexander, SpruntColumbia University
1963First report linking a specific virus (herpes simplex virus) to a specific cancer (cervical cancer)SternUniversity of California Los Angeles
4 Jan 1963May-Britt Moser born in Fosnavag, NorwayMay-Britt MoserNorwegian University of Science and Technology
21 Aug 1963Gladys Rowena H Dick diedGladys DickUniversity of Chicago, John R. McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, St Luke's Hospital
19 Feb 1964Jennifer Doudna born Washington, DC, USADoudna 
16 Apr 1964Lucy Willis diedWillisRoyal Free Hospital, Haffkine Institute
May 1964Evelyn Witkin discovered that UV mutagenesis in E. coli could be reversed through dark exposureWitkinCold Spring Harbor Laboratory
10 Dec 1964Dorothy Hodgkin became the first British woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry HodgkinOxford University
1965First comprehensive protein sequence and structure computer data published as 'Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure'Dayhoff, Ledley, EckNational Biomedical Research Foundation, Georgetown University
27 Nov 1965Plasmids noted to carry genes conveying antibiotic resistance in bacteriaAnderson, Datta 
August 1966FDA approved allopurinol for goutElion, HitchingWellcome Research Laboratories
1967Youyou Tu started working on extraction and isolation of Chinese herbal materials with antimalarial propertiesTuChina Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences
28 Dec 1967Katherine McCormick diedMcCormickMassachusetts Institute of Technology
March 1968FDA approved azathioprine, an immunosuppressant to prevent rejection of kidney transplantsElionWellcome Research Laboratories
24 Jun 1968Hattie Elizabeth Alexander diedAlexanderColumbia University
26 Jun 1970Padmanee Sharma born in Gerogetown, GuyanaSharmaMD Anderson Cancer Center
November 1970Means developed for cloning B cells that produce single antibodies with known specificityAskonas, Williamson, WrightNational Institute for Medical Research
1971First plasmid bacterial cloning vector constructedBerg, Mertz, JacksonStanford University
June 1971Janet Mertz forced to halt experiment to clone recombinant DNA in bacteria after safety concerns raisedMertz, Berg, PollackStanford University
September 1971Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique first publishedPerlmann, EngvallStockholm University
December 1971First experiments published demonstrating the use of restriction enzymes to cut DNADanna, NathansJohns Hopkins University
1972Beverly Griffin appointed head of nuclear acids research at Imperial Cancer Research FundGriffinImperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories
1972Youyou Tu and her team isolated and purified artemisinin (qinghaosu)TuChina Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences
November 1972Janet Mertz and Ronald Davis published first easy-to-use technique for constructing recombinant DNA showed that when DNA is cleaved with EcoRI, a restriction enzyme, it has sticky endsMertz, DavisStanford University
1973Brigette Askonas elected Fellow of the Royal SocietyAskonas 
1973 - 1976Discovery of DNA repair mechanism in bacteria - the SOS responseWitkin, RadmanCold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Free University of Brussels
1 Nov 1973First time DNA was successfully transferred from one life form to anotherCohen, Chang, BoyerStanford University, University of California San Francisco
7 Aug 1974Virginia Apgar diedApgarColumbia University
January 1975Mertz completed her doctorate MertzStanford University
1977 - 1978Cytolytic T cells shown to recognise multiple subtypes of viruses, including influenza virusesMcMichael, Ting, Zweerink, AskonasNational Institute for Medical Research
1977First method developed for studying gene regulation in a higher organismMertz, Gurdon, De RobertisLaboratory of Molecular Biology
1979First DNA fragments of Epstein Barr Virus cloned Griffin, LindahlImperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories, University of Gothenberg
1980 - 1990Existence of the blood stem cell contestedDexter, Lord, Weissmann, Morrison
1980Polyoma virus DNA sequencedGriffin, Soeda, Arrand, WalshImperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories
18 Aug 1980Elizabeth Stern diedSternUniversity of California Los Angeles
15 Sep 1980Largest nucleic acid sequence database in the world made available free over telephone networkDayhoffNational Biomedical Research Foundation, Georgetown University
December 1980First patient received cochlear implant providing some understanding of speechIngeborg Hochmair, Erwin HochmairMED-EL
1981Anti-malarial properties of artemisinin presented to WHO and World Bank meeting in BeijingTuChina Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences
10 Jul 1981Complete library of overlapping DNA fragments of Epstein Barr Virus clonedGriffin, Arrand, Walsh, Bjorck, RymoImperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories, University of Gothenberg
29 Mar 1982FDA approved acyclovir, the first successful antiviral drug, for treating the herpes virusElion, HowardWellcome Research Laboratories
5 Feb 1983Margaret Dayhoff died in Silver Spring, Maryland, USADayhoffSilver Spring, Maryland
1984First chimeric monoclonal antibodies developed, laying foundation for safer and more effective monoclonal antibody therapeuticsNeuberger, Rabbitts, Morrison, Oi, Herzenberg, Boulianne, Schulman, HozumiLaboratory of Molecular Biology, Stanford Univerity Medical School
December 1984Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn announced the discovery of telomerase, an enzyme that adds extra DNA bases to the ends of chromosomesBlackburn, GreiderUniversity of California Berkeley
1987 - 1988Mice experiments showed T cells to be double-edged sword in clearing persistent infections with respiratory syncytial virusCannon, Stott, Taylor, Askonas, OpenshawNational Institute for Medical Research
1988Beverly Griffin appointed first woman professor at Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith HospitalGriffinImperial College
October 1989RNA demonstrated to help catalyse the process for synthesising proteinDoudna, Cormack, SzostakHarvard University
December 1990BRCA1, a single gene on chromosome 17, shown to be responsible for many breast and ovarian cancersKing, Lee, Newman, Morrow, Anderson, HueyUniversity of California Berkeley
23 Aug 1991Florence B Seibert diedSeibertYale University, University of Uppsala, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania
28 Nov 1991Lu Gwei-djen diedGwei-djenUniversity of Cambridge
2 Sep 1992Barbara McClintock diedMcClintockUniversity of Missouri
4 Jul 1993Gladys Lounsbury Hobby diedHobbyColumbia University, Pfizer
29 Jul 1994Dorothy M Crowfoot Hodgkin diedD HodgkinOxford University
1996First reports that blood stem cell might be able to give rise to cells other than those of the blood systemBlau, Lagasse, Lemischka, Morrison, Thiese, Krause, Gussoni, Bjornson 
1 Feb 1996Paper published indicating thymus-leukaemia antigen, a cell-surface marker, stimulates T cells to destroy specific target cellsSharmaPennsylvania State University
28 Oct 1997Marian E Koshland diedKoshlandBrookhaven National Laboratory
21 Feb 1999Gertrude B Elion diedElionWellcome Research Laboratories
2 Jan 2000Polyoma virus shown to be potential tool for delivering gene therapyKrauzewicz, Stokrova, Jenkins, Elliott, Higgns, GriffinImperial College, Czech Academy of Sciences, University of Wales
25 Oct 2001Structure and function of ribosomes deciphered opening up new era for improving antibiotic drugs and designing new onesYonath, Schlunzen, Zarivach, Harms, Basham, Ticilj, Albrecht, FrancheschiWeizmann Institute
30 Nov 2001Ada Yonath and colleagues published the complete high-resolution of structures of both ribosomal subunits and discovered a region important to the process of polypeptide polymerisationYonathWeizmann Institute
9 Sep 2003Marthe L Vogt diedVogtNational Institute for Medical Research
28 Oct 2003Marie M Daly diedMary DalyRockefeller Institute, Columbia University
13 Dec 2003Sharma discovered some bladder cancer cells expressed the marker NY-ESO-1 providing means for cancer vaccineSharmaMemorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
1 Jan 2005Discovery of nerve cell that allows the brain to determine spatial position May-Britt Moser, Edvard Moser, O'KeefeNorwegian University of Science and Technology
25 Aug 2005Harvard scientists reported reprogramming adult skin cells into embryonic stem cells Cowan, Eggan, Melton, AlienzaHarvard Stem Cell Institute
2006Inducible co-stimulator (ICOS) protein found to enhance anti-CTLA-4 treatment in destruction of cancer cellsSharma, Liakou, Kamat, Ng Tang, Chen, Sun, Troncoso, LogothetisMD Anderson Cancer Center
11 Nov 2006Esther Lederberg diedEsther LederbergWisconsin University
22 Nov 2006Asima Chatterjee diedChatterjeeUniversity of Calcutta
7 Jul 2007Anne McLaren died McLarenUniversity College London, Edinburgh University, Cambridge University
29 Sep 2007Katsuko Saruhashi diedSaruhashi 
1 Dec 2007June Almeida diedAlmeidaHammersmith Postgraduate Medical School
30 Nov 2008Naomi Datta diedDattaHammersmith Hospital
14 Jan 2010Research published suggesting gene therapy could help preserve neural circuits and protect against vision loss in patients with multiple sclerosisDorothy Schafer, Werneburg, Jung, Kunjama University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Chicago, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, University of Connecticut School of Medicine
30 May 2011Rosalyn Yalow diedYalowVeterans Administration Hospital
May 2012First patent application submitted for CRISPR-Cas 9 technologyDoudna, CharpentierUniversity of California Berkeley, University of Vienna
17 Aug 2012Publication of radically new gene editing method that harnesses the CRISPR-Cas9 system Jinek, Chylinski, Fonfara, Hauer, Doudna, CharpentierUniversity of California Berkeley
30 Dec 2012Rita Levi-Montalcini diedLevi-MontalciniInstitute of Cell Biology of the CNR
9 Jan 2013Brigitte Askonas diedAskonasNational Institute for Medical Research
18 Sep 2015UK scientists sought license to genetically modify human embryos to study the role played by genes in the first few days of human fertilisationNaikanCrick Institute
5 Oct 2015Tu Youyou awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of artemisinin, a treatment for malariaTuChina Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences
13 Jun 2016Beverly Griffin diedGriffinImperial College
30 Jan 2018First human eggs grown in laboratoryTelfer, McLaughlin, Albertini, Wallace, AndersonUniversity of Edinburg
7 Oct 2020Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 'for the development of a method for genome editing'.Doudna, CharpentierUniversity California Berkeley, University of Umea

Respond to or comment on this page on our feeds on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon or Twitter.