In Nobel Prize Women in Science, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores the reason for this astonishing disparity. She does so by examining the lives and achievements of fourteen women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel Prize-winning project. It tells the dramatic stories of the relentless discrimination these women faced in universities, both as studenst seeking a scientific education and as researchers who wish to make their careers in scientific study and discovery. Their accomplishments were due to two factors: they were in love with science itself and were passionately determined to succeed.

The book begins with Marie Curie, the scientist who unlocked the secrets of radioactivity, the key to understanding the human nucleus, and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in science, in 1903.