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Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell is most recognized in the United States as the first woman to receive a medical degree (MD). Blackwell was a social awareness and moral reformer in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and she pushed education for women in medicine through her inspirational book Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women. -
Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African-American woman to acquire a medical degree in the United States. Dr. Crumpler graduated from New England Female Medical College in 1864, defying the prejudice that prevented so many Black Americans from pursuing professions in medicine. -
Susan La Flesche Picotte
Susan La Flesche witnessed a white, male doctor refuse to treat a Native American woman. This inspired her to become the first female Native American in the United States to obtain a medical degree. She eventually assisted in raising funding for the construction of a hospital in Walthill, Nebraska. Following her death in 1915, the hospital was renamed Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital. -
Mari Curie
Marie Curie, a Polish mathematician and physicist, worked alongside her husband, Pierre, to discover two chemical elements in the periodic table: polonium and radium. This significant work discovered a link between radioactivity and the heavier elements of the periodic table, which led to significant advances in medicine such as the x-ray. -
Gerty Cori
Cori was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in this field. Her research led to the finding that metabolic diseases could be caused by an enzyme shortage. -
Virginia Apgar
Virginia Apgar is best known for inventing the Apgar score, a key test that doctors soon embraced to determine if newborn newborns required immediate medical assistance. The Apgar score has significantly reduced infant death rates and is still used today to evaluate the clinical state of newborns in their first few minutes of life. -
Gertrude Belle Elion
American chemist, is noted for her revolutionary methods of rational drug design that created 45 patents, including medications to treat leukemia, herpes, and AIDS, as well as treatments to minimize the body's rejection of foreign tissue in kidney transplants between unrelated donors -
Antonia Novella
A native of Puerto Rico, specialized in nephrology, pediatrics, and public health, and held leadership positions at the old National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Disorders and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development -
Nusslein Volhard
She was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from Yale in 1990, shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis for research on the early stages of embryonic development. -
Francoise Barre Sinoussi
Parisian biologist, is famous for discovering HIV as the cause of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS. Her crucial work has enabled millions of HIV-positive patients to live long, healthy lives and may open the road for a cure in the near future. -