---
title: "Timeline of women in science"
chunk: 6/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:04:23.558030+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== 1890s ===
1890: Austrian-born chemist Ida Freund became the first woman to work as a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She was promoted to full lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge.
1890: Popular science educator and author Agnes Giberne co-founded the British Astronomical Association. Subsequently, English astronomer Elizabeth Brown was appointed the director of the association's Solar Section, well known for her studies in sunspots and other solar phenomena.
1890: Mathematician Philippa Fawcett became the first woman to obtain the highest score in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos examinations, a score "above the Senior Wrangler". (At the time, women were ineligible to be named Senior Wrangler.)
1891: American-born astronomer Dorothea Klumpke was appointed as Head of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory. For the next decade, in addition to completing her doctorate of science, she worked on the Carte du Ciel mapping project. She was recognized for her work with the first Prix de Dames award from the Société astronomique de France and named an Officier of the Paris Academy of Sciences.
1892: American psychologist Christine Ladd-Franklin presented her evolutionary theory on the development of colour vision to the International Congress of Psychology. Her theory was the first to emphasize colour vision as an evolutionary trait.
1893: Florence Bascom became the second woman to earn her PhD in geology in the United States, and the first woman to receive a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Geologists consider her to be the "first woman geologist in this country (America)".
1893: American botanist Elizabeth Gertrude Britton became a charter member of the Botanical Society of America.
1894: American astronomer Margaretta Palmer becomes the first woman to earn a doctorate in astronomy.
1895: English physiologist Marion Bidder became the first woman to speak and present her own paper at a meeting of the Royal Society.
1896: Florence Bascom became the first woman to work for the United States Geological Survey.
1896: English mycologist and lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith became a founding member of the British Mycological Society. She later served as president twice.
1896: Russian ophthalmologist Rosa Kerschbaumer-Putjata graduates from Universität Bern. She becomes the first female doctor permitted to practice in Austria due to a special permit granted by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. She campaigned for women's right to study medicine in Austria.
1897: American cytologists and zoologists Katharine Foot and Ella Church Strobell started working as research partners. Together, they pioneered the practice of photographing microscopic research samples and invented a new technique for creating thin material samples in colder temperatures.
1897: American physicist Isabelle Stone became the first woman to receive a PhD in physics in the United States. She wrote her dissertation "On the Electrical Resistance of Thin Films" at the University of Chicago.
1898: Danish physicist Kirstine Meyer was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
1898: Italian malacologist Marianna Paulucci donated her collection of specimens to the Royal Museum of Natural History in Florence, Italy (Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze). Paulucci was the first scientist to compile and publish a species list of Italian malacofauna.
1899: American physicists Marcia Keith and Isabelle Stone became charter members of the American Physical Society.
1899: Irish physicist Edith Anne Stoney was appointed a physics lecturer at the London School of Medicine for Women, becoming the first female medical physicist. She later became a pioneering figure in the use of X-ray machines on the front lines of World War I.

== Early 20th century ==

=== 1900s ===