Royal Society celebrates great women in science – in pictures

Zita Martins by Garry Kennard (ink on paper, 2013). Martins is an astrobiologist who analyses carbonaceous meteorites for organic molecules and is a Royal Society Research Fellow with the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College, London
© Gary Kennard

Radium (Marie and Pierre Curie), by Julius Mendes Price (chromolithograph, 1904). Curie (1867-1934) was a chemist and physicist who isfamous for her pioneering work in the field of radioactivity. She was the first woman scientist to win a Nobel Prize (twice) and the first female professor at the University of Paris Photograph: Royal Society

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore by Garry Kennard (ink on paper, 2013). Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, with interests in social cognition and decision-making during human adolescence
© Garry Kennard

Uta Frith and Chris Frith by Emma Wesley (acrylic on board, 2007). The Friths, both Fellows of the Royal Society, are cognitive neuroscientists based at University College London. They have individual research interests and collaboratively they are trying to delineate the mechanisms underlying the human ability to share representations of the world, making communication possible.
© Emma Wesley

Miriam Rothschild, by Marcus Cornish, bronze, 2004. Rothschild FRS (1908-2005) was a botanist and entomologist famous for her longstanding interest in fleas and their jumping mechanism. She was also a tireless campaigner for the importance of biodiversity of plants, insects and animals
© Marcus Cornish

Dorothy Hodgkin by Graham Sutherland (pencil and watercolour on paper, 1979 or 1980). Hodgkin (1910-1994), a fellow of the Royal Society, was an x-ray crystallographer who determined the molecular structures of penicillin and vitamin B12. She remains the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize
© Estate of Graham Sutherland/Royal Society

Sunetra Gupta by Garry Kennard (ink on paper, 2013). Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the University of Oxford’s department of zoology working on infectious diseases and with a parallel career as a novelist.
© Garry Kennard

Anne McLaren by Emma Wesley (oil on panel, 2010). McLaren (1927-2007), a Fellow of the Royal Society, was a developmental biologist and leading researcher into fertility. She was the first woman to be made an Officer of the Royal Society.
© Emma Wesley

Elsie Widdowson by Margo Bulman (bronze, 1995). Widdowson (1906-2000), a fellow of the Royal Society, was a leading researcher in food and nutrition and a fearless self-experimenter: her work informed British rationing during the second world war and after the war she studied the effects of diet (and starvation) on health
© Royal Society

Professor Francesca Happe by Garry Kennard (ink on paper, 2013). Happe is a cognitive neuroscientist with research interests in autism and Asperger's syndrome. She is director of the MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London
© Garry Kennard