Every year, Nobel Prizes are awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, Literature and Peace. They are decided upon by a Scandinavian Committee instigated by Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and they recognise cultural and scientific advances. Immensely prestigious, the female Nobel Prize Winners are amongst the most exalted names in world history including Albert Einstein, Theodore Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling, John Steinbeck and Martin Luther King. Here are 7 thoroughly deserving female Nobel Prize recipients.
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Marie Curie is also the only female to have ever won two awards. In 1903 she was co-winner with husband Pierre of the prize for physics in recognition of the extraordinary service by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. She then won the prize for Chemistry in 1911, this time without hubby, in recognition of her discovery of the elements radium and polonium.
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Probably the most famous of all female recipients, Mother Theresa was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. If you want to feel inspired, here’s an extract from her acceptance speech. "I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."
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Obviously the super genes run in the Curie family because Irène, daughter of Pierre and Marie, continued their work with radioactive elements and received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935.
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In 1997 Jody Williams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with land mines. She shared the prize with the organization she co-founded – ICBL – the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
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Although she was a long time campaigner against both Apartheid and nuclear weapons, Doris Lessing actually won her Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Mrs. Lessing was only the 11th woman to be a literature Laureate but Herta Müller became the 12th in 2009.
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For her non-stop campaign for civil rights in Myanmar (Burma) which she even continued despite being under house arrest, this lady was given the Peace Prize in 1991. She was finally allowed to leave her house when the arrest order was lifted in November 2010, 15 years after being implemented in July 1989.
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From a working class black family Toni Morrison has reached the echelons of top novelists and her work was recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Toni Morrison is one of only 2 black female Laureates, the other being Kenyan Wangari Maathi who won the Peace Prize in 2005. When Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he was the 13th African-American Nobel Laureate in 106 years.
This is a list or remarkable and inspiring women taken from the total of 41 female Nobel Prize winners... I think there should be so many more! Whic of these female Nobel Prize winners motivates you to achieve more? Who else inspires you?
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