Only four of the 192 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have ever been awarded to women. Four. But if you think that means women played a minor role in the history of this science, you’ve been reading the wrong books. The women who shaped chemistry number far more than four – and their stories are some of the most powerful you’ll ever hear.
At Lo-Wren, we believe that every story matters, especially the ones that were silenced, stolen, or simply never told. The women in this article worked in kitchens, in basements, in laboratories where they were the only female face in the room. They didn’t have mentors who looked like them. They didn’t have communities cheering them on. Many of them didn’t even get credit for their own discoveries.
And yet they changed the world.
Today, a girl curious about chemistry can open her laptop and use an ai chemistry solver to break down any problem step by step – at midnight, in her pajamas, without asking anyone’s permission. She can join communities like ours and hear other girls say, “I felt that way too.” That’s extraordinary. But it’s only extraordinary because, for centuries, brilliant women had none of that – and still refused to stop.
These are their stories. Your textbooks forgot them. We didn’t.
Elizabeth Fulhame (1790s) – The Woman Who Discovered Catalysis Before It Had a Name
In 1794, while the French Revolution was reshaping Europe, a Scottish woman named Elizabeth Fulhame quietly published a book that would reshape chemistry – if anyone had bothered to remember it.
Her work, An Essay on Combustion, proposed something radical: that water played an active role in chemical reactions, being decomposed and reformed during the process. She was describing, in essence, the concept of catalysis – decades before the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius coined the term in 1835.
Elizabeth had no institutional affiliation. No laboratory. No degree. Her husband was a physician, not a chemist. She conducted experiments on her own, driven by a single spark of curiosity: she wanted to figure out how to deposit metals onto fabric using light and chemicals. What began as an interest in decorative cloth became a foundational contribution to photochemistry and catalytic theory.
When her book was published, the reactions were mixed – literally. Some male scientists praised her work. Others mocked the very idea of a woman doing chemistry. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was so impressed he made her an honorary member of the Philadelphia Chemical Society. The book was translated into German. It crossed the Atlantic.
And then? Silence. For nearly two hundred years, Elizabeth Fulhame was a footnote – if she appeared at all. It wasn’t until modern historians began re-examining early chemistry that her contributions were rediscovered.
You don’t need someone’s permission to explore what fascinates you.
Agnes Pockels (1890s) – The Kitchen-Table Scientist Who Outperformed Nobel Laureates
Agnes Pockels wanted to study physics. She had the mind for it, the passion for it, and absolutely none of the institutional access. In late 19th-century Germany, women were not admitted to universities. So Agnes stayed home, took care of her aging parents, and – in the hours between domestic duties – conducted experiments at the kitchen sink.
She was fascinated by something most people never think about: the thin film that forms on the surface of water. Using a button, a thin tray, and a balance she built from household items, Agnes developed a device to measure surface tension with remarkable precision. That homemade instrument eventually became known as the Pockels Trough – and it is still used in laboratories around the world today.
In 1891, she wrote a letter to Lord Rayleigh, one of Britain’s most prominent physicists, describing her findings. Rayleigh was so impressed that he personally submitted her letter to the journal Nature, where it was published – an almost unheard-of achievement for a woman with no academic credentials.
Here’s the bitter twist: Irving Langmuir later refined her trough design and used it as the foundation for his research on surface chemistry. He won the Nobel Prize in 1932. Agnes Pockels received the Laura R. Leonard Prize and a modest mention in history. Most students who use the Langmuir-Blodgett trough in labs today have never heard her name.
She never left that kitchen. But what she discovered there outlasted every barrier placed in front of her.
The most powerful lab you’ll ever have is your own curiosity.
Alice Ball (1910s) – The 23-Year-Old Who Cured Leprosy and Had Her Work Stolen
Alice Augusta Ball was, by any measure, extraordinary. In 1915, at just 23 years old, she became the first African American – and the first woman – to earn a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Hawai’i. But her degree wasn’t even the most remarkable thing about her.
For decades, doctors had used chaulmoogra oil as a treatment for Hansen’s disease (leprosy), but the oil was thick, painful to inject, and inconsistent in its results. Alice developed a method to chemically modify the oil into injectable, water-soluble compounds that the body could actually absorb. It worked. Her technique – the Ball Method – became the most effective treatment for leprosy for over thirty years, until sulfone drugs replaced it in the 1940s.
Then Alice Ball died. She was 24 years old. The cause remains unclear – possibly chlorine poisoning from a laboratory accident.
What happened next is painfully predictable. Arthur Dean, the president of the University of Hawai’i’s chemistry department, published her work under his own name. He called the technique the “Dean Method.” For decades, Alice’s contribution was erased, her name replaced by the man who took credit for what she built.
It wasn’t until 2000 – eighty-four years after her death – that the University of Hawai’i finally recognized Alice Ball with a plaque and a declaration. February 29 was designated “Alice Ball Day” by the lieutenant governor of Hawai’i.
She was 23 when she changed medicine forever. She never got to see the lives she saved.
Your work has value even when those around you refuse to see it.
Rosalind Franklin (1950s) – The Photo That Changed Biology and the Woman Erased from It
You’ve probably heard of Watson and Crick, the two scientists credited with discovering the structure of DNA. You may even know the phrase “double helix.” But do you know who actually produced the evidence that made that discovery possible?
Her name was Rosalind Franklin.
Rosalind was a brilliant X-ray crystallographer working at King’s College London. In May 1952, she and her graduate student Raymond Gosling captured Photo 51 – an X-ray diffraction image of DNA so clear, so precise, that it essentially revealed the molecule’s helical structure. It is considered one of the most important photographs in the history of science.
Without Rosalind’s knowledge or consent, her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed Photo 51 to James Watson. Watson later admitted that the moment he saw the image, the structure of DNA became immediately obvious. He and Francis Crick published their famous paper in Nature in 1953. The acknowledgment of Rosalind’s contribution was buried in a footnote.
In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Rosalind was not included – she had died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at the age of 37, likely due to prolonged exposure to X-ray radiation during her research. Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, which conveniently closed the door on her recognition.
What made it worse was Watson’s 1968 memoir, The Double Helix, in which he described Rosalind dismissively, mocking her appearance and mannerisms. The woman whose photograph unlocked the secret of life was reduced to a caricature by the man who benefited most from her work.
Being overlooked is not the same as being unimportant.
Mary Sherman Morgan (1950s) – The Rocket Fuel Inventor America Never Knew
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and America panicked. The Space Race had begun, and the United States was losing. What the country needed was a rocket fuel powerful enough to launch a satellite into orbit – and the person who invented it was a woman with no college degree whose name was classified.
Mary Sherman Morgan grew up on a farm in North Dakota during the Great Depression. She left home to attend college but never finished her degree – World War II interrupted, and she went to work at a munitions factory. After the war, she was hired by North American Aviation’s Rocketdyne Division, where she became the only woman among 900 engineers.
When the Army’s Redstone rocket failed to generate enough thrust, Mary was assigned the problem. She invented Hydyne, a new liquid fuel that provided the extra power needed. On January 31, 1958, a Jupiter-C rocket fueled by Hydyne launched Explorer 1 – America’s first satellite – into orbit. The Space Race had its answer.
But Mary’s contribution was classified. Her name appeared in no newspapers. She received no public recognition. She never spoke about her work, not even to her own children. It wasn’t until her son, playwright George Morgan, began researching her life decades later that her story came to light. He wrote a play, then a book – Rocket Girl – to ensure his mother would finally be remembered.
Mary Sherman Morgan died in 2004, still largely unknown to the country she helped launch into space.
Success doesn’t always come with a spotlight – but that doesn’t make it less real.
Katharine Burr Blodgett (1930s) – The Invisible-Glass Pioneer Hidden in a Man’s Shadow
In 1926, Katharine Burr Blodgett became the first woman to earn a PhD in physics from Cambridge University. She was recruited by General Electric before she even finished her doctorate – personally invited by Irving Langmuir, who recognized her extraordinary talent.
For the next four decades, Katharine worked alongside Langmuir at GE, pushing the boundaries of surface chemistry. Her most famous achievement came in 1938 when she developed a method to apply ultra-thin monomolecular coatings to glass – layer by layer, each only one molecule thick – until the glass became virtually invisible. Non-reflecting “invisible” glass was born.
The applications were immediate and far-reaching. Her coatings improved camera lenses, submarine periscopes, airplane spy cameras, and projector optics during World War II. Today, the same fundamental technology lives in every smartphone screen, eyeglass lens, and camera sensor you’ve ever used.
Katharine held eight U.S. patents. She was the first woman to receive the Photographic Society of America’s Annual Achievement Award. The New York Times profiled her work.
And yet – ask most people who invented non-reflective glass, and they’ll either say they don’t know or guess it was a man. Irving Langmuir won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for surface chemistry research that was deeply intertwined with Katharine’s contributions. She spent nearly her entire career referred to as his assistant, his protégée, his colleague – never quite as a pioneer in her own right.
The screens you’re reading this on right now? They exist, in part, because of her.
The things you build can change the world long after the applause fades.
Tu Youyou (Modern Era) – The Woman Who Saved Millions Without a PhD or Medical Degree
If the previous stories left you frustrated – all that brilliance, all that injustice – then let this one give you hope.
Tu Youyou is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who did something no one else could: she found a cure for malaria that has saved millions of lives. And she did it by looking where no one else thought to look – in the past.
In 1969, during China’s Cultural Revolution, Tu Youyou was appointed to lead a secret government research project called Project 523, tasked with finding a treatment for malaria, which was devastating soldiers and civilians alike. Modern medicine had hit a wall. Conventional drugs were failing as the malaria parasite developed resistance.
Tu Youyou turned to ancient Chinese medical texts. She combed through over 2,000 recipes from traditional herbal medicine, eventually finding a reference to sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) in a 1,600-year-old text by the physician Ge Hong. The ancient recipe said to soak the plant in cold water – and that detail turned out to be critical. Previous researchers had used heat-based extraction, which destroyed the active compound. Tu Youyou used a low-temperature extraction method and isolated artemisinin – the compound that would become the world’s most important antimalarial drug.
She tested it on herself first to ensure its safety.
In 2015, Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel, and notably, one of the very few Nobel laureates without a PhD, a medical degree, or membership in any national academy.
Her story is not just about chemistry. It’s about the courage to believe that an answer exists, even when everyone else has given up looking.
Sometimes the answer to a modern problem is hidden in an ancient story – just like yours.
The Pattern: Why Were These Stories Hidden?
Seven women. Three centuries. Different countries, different backgrounds, different obstacles. And yet the pattern is unmistakable.
Their credit was stolen. Alice Ball’s method was renamed after the man who published it. Rosalind Franklin’s photograph was shared without her consent. Elizabeth Fulhame’s book was forgotten. It’s a phenomenon so common it has a name: the Matilda Effect – the systematic underrecognition of women’s contributions to science, named after suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, who first described it in 1870.
The institutions excluded them. Agnes Pockels couldn’t attend university. Mary Sherman Morgan never finished her degree. Katharine Blodgett was one of the first women even allowed through Cambridge’s doors. These women didn’t fail to enter the system – the system failed to let them in.
Social expectations boxed them in. Agnes was expected to stay home and care for her parents. Mary was expected to stay silent about classified work. Rosalind was expected to tolerate a hostile work environment without complaint. The message was always the same: know your place.
Race and class compounded everything. Alice Ball faced not just sexism but racism – a double barrier that made her erasure even more complete.
But here’s the other pattern, the one that matters more: every single one of them kept going. They experimented in kitchens. They published without credentials. They invented without recognition. They tested drugs on themselves. They wrote to strangers. They showed up to labs where no one wanted them and did work that outlasted everyone who doubted them.
The obstacles change shape. The persistence doesn’t.
What About You?
Maybe you read these stories and felt inspired. Maybe you felt angry. Maybe you thought, “That’s incredible, but I’m not a science person.”
We’d like to gently push back on that.
Elizabeth Fulhame had no lab. Agnes Pockels had no degree. Alice Ball was 23. Mary Sherman Morgan never finished college. Tu Youyou didn’t have a PhD. Chemistry doesn’t require you to look, sound, or feel a certain way. It requires curiosity – and that’s something you already have.
If these stories stirred something in you, here are three small ways to start your own journey:
1. Get curious about one thing
Pick a product you use every day – your shampoo, your favorite snack, your skincare routine – and look up what’s actually in it. What are those ingredients? What do they do? Chemistry isn’t some abstract thing that happens in a faraway lab. It’s in your kitchen, your bathroom, your morning coffee. It’s already part of your life.
2. Find a study companion that doesn’t judge
If you’re studying chemistry in school or college and a problem feels impossible, don’t let frustration convince you that you’re not smart enough. These women didn’t have patient, always-available help – but you do. Tools like Chemistry AI exist specifically for moments like that: clear, step-by-step explanations that help you understand the logic behind a problem, not just memorize an answer. Think of it as the 2 a.m. tutor Agnes Pockels never had.
3. Share your story
Have you ever felt “not enough” for a subject? Too slow, too confused, too afraid to raise your hand? That feeling is more common than you think – and talking about it is more powerful than you realize. Your experience might be the exact thing another girl needs to hear to keep going.
That’s why Lo-Wren exists. This space was built so you could say the things you’ve been holding back – and find out you were never alone.
Every Story Matters
The women in this article didn’t have a community like ours. They worked in isolation, without support networks, without anyone telling them their stories were worth hearing. Most of them never saw their contributions acknowledged in their own lifetimes.
We can do it differently.
We can name them. We can share their stories. We can refuse to let brilliance be erased simply because it came from a woman. And we can make sure the next generation of girls – girls like you – never has to wonder whether their voice matters.
It does.
Your story already matters. You don’t need a Nobel Prize, a laboratory, or anyone’s permission to prove it.
Know a girl who needs to hear these stories? Share this article with her. And if these women inspired you, we want to hear your story too – because this community runs on the courage of girls who choose to speak up.