Science

Charlotte Friend

Cell biologist and immunologist Charlotte Friend discovered a virus that could transmit leukemia and made major contributions to our understanding of cancer and its causes. She served as director of the Center for Experimental Cell Biology at Mount Sinai Medical School, and later as the president of the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for Cancer Research.

Else Frenkel-Brunswik

Else Frenkel-Brunswik was a social psychologist who is best known as a coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality.

Anna Freud

Anna Freud’s life was a constant search for useful social applications of psychoanalysis. Through her studies of children, she shaped the fields of both child psychology and developmental psychology.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin

An influential British physical chemist, Rosalind Elsie Franklin’s essential innovations in DNA research, including her X-ray DNA photography and her work in distinguishing between “A” and “B” forms of DNA, allowed Frances Crick and James Watson to solve the structure of DNA as early as 1953. Her important role in their work went largely unacknowledged until the 1990s.

Käte Frankenthal

A stubborn nonconformist from an early age, Käte Frankenthal was a physician and politician active in Germany’s Social Democratic Party. While running her own successful private practice, she was active in sex reform legislation and played a prominent role in the Federation of Women Physicians.

Selma Fraiberg

Selma Fraiberg was a psychoanalyst, author, and pioneer in the field of infant psychiatry. Her classic parenting book The Magic Years was the result of her years of research in the field of social work and her experiences as a stay-at-home mother.

Rita Sapiro Finkler

Rita Sapiro Finkler was a pioneer in the field of endocrinology, making important discoveries about the role hormones play in pregnancy, menopause, and other aspects of women’s health. She was the first womn to hold many of the leadership positions she held, and was president of the New Jersey branch of the American Medical Women’s Association.

Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan

Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan helped pioneer the scientific analysis of native Israeli flora and establish the study of botany and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sara Rivka Feder-Keyfitz

A childhood friend of Golda Meir, Sara Feder-Keyfitz grew up to be a significant Zionist and feminist leader in her own right. From 1951 to 1955, she served as the national president of Pioneer Women

Ruth Lewis Farkas

Ruth Lewis Farkas’ remarkable and varied career ranged from creating a retail chain that survived the Great Depression, to teaching sociology, to running international education initiatives. Her impressive and full life spanned many occupations: educator, sociologist, businesswoman, philanthropist, inventor, wife, and mother.

Claire Fagin

Claire Fagin was a distinguished nursing educator, scholar, and dean, as well as the first woman interim president of the University of Pennsylvania and the first female to achieve this position in any Ivy League university. Her groundbreaking studies on parents and children changed hospital practices around the country.

Community Dance Practices in the Yishuv and Israel: 1900-2000

Women have been at the forefront of preserving community dance practices in Israel. In the 1970s Gurit Kadman worked with ethnomusicologist Dr. Esther Gerson-Kiwi to collect, document, and study ethnic music and dance practices in Israel. Eventually elements of ethnic dances were incorporated into the canon of Israeli folk dance.

Sara Riwka B’raz Erlich

An exemplar of the amalgamation of cultures in the Diaspora, Sara Riwka Erlich was a Brazilian-Jewish woman author and scientist whose writings drew from her work in psychiatry, her Jewish heritage, and her experiences in Brazil and Israel. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Erlich was born in Recife, Brazil, in 1935 and published memoirs, stories, poems, and essays in Portuguese until the early twenty-first century.

Claire Epstein

Claire Epstein is an outstanding example of a spirited woman archaeologist who worked untiringly and out of true love in search of the past in the Land of Israel. She received two important awards for her work: the Israel Museum’s Percia Shimmel Award in Archaeology and the Israel Prize for archaeology.

Gertrude Elion

Gertrude Elion’s biochemistry work revolutionized the ways drugs are developed. She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine even though she never earned her PhD. Her career paved the way for chemotherapy, organ transplantation, anti-viral medications, and AIDS treatment.

Tilly Edinger

Tilly Edinger made her mark as one of the leading vertebrate paleontologists of the twentieth century. Her pioneering work in paleoneurology, the study of fossil brains, established her international reputation as the outstanding woman in her field. She performed research in Germany before World War II and continued researching and teaching in the United States until her untimely death in 1967.

Trude Dothan

Trude Dothan was one of the foremost biblical archaeologists of her generation. Her excavations and her research brought to light the material culture of the Philistines, the cultural connections between the seagoing nations and ancient Israel, and the connections with Egypt.

Doctors: Medieval

Many Jewish women practiced medicine throughout Europe and the Middle East during the medieval period, forming an integral part of the Jewish working community.

Helene Deutsch

Helene Deutsch was mentored by Sigmund Freud and was the first psychoanalyst to write a book on female psychology. In the 1920s she emerged as one of the most successful teachers in the history of psychoanalysis and in 1924 she became the first woman to head a psychoanalytic clinic.

Dorothy Dinnerstein

Dorothy Dinnerstein earned her place as a major feminist thinker with her groundbreaking 1976 book The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. In her later work, she shifted her focus to ecology and nuclear disarmament.

Naomi Deutsch

A leader in the field of public health nursing, Naomi Deutsch spearheaded health and sanitation campaigns in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean. In running settlement houses, teaching, and eventually developing and implementing policy at the federal level, Deutsch dedicated her career to serving others through public health.

Florence Levin Denmark

Florence Levin Denmark helped found the field of women’s psychology and built crucial support for it in academic circles.

Frances Allen De Ford

A pioneering physician in the industrial Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Frances Allen de Ford's work led to a decrease in malarial infection. She also supported women's rights, including the right to vote, and was influential in her daughter Miriam's work as a suffragist.

Ruby Daniel

Ruby Daniel’s 1995 book, Ruby of Cochin: An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers, combines recounting of historical events with engaging storytelling. The book endures as a significant contribution to Jewish history and ethnography.

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori in the Lab

Gerty Theresa Cori

Gerty Cori’s work on carbohydrate metabolism, which changed our understanding of diabetes, earned her the Nobel Prize for Medicine, making her the first American woman given the honor.