Women in STEM: landmark publications

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the election of our first women Fellows, we’re highlighting landmark papers published by women in Philosophical Transactions that cover some of the key moments in scientific history.

The first woman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 80 years ago, but women have been publishing in Royal Society journals since 1755, when Louise Belcher’s letter describing a wave was published in Philosophical Transactions, the world’s longest running science journal. She was named only as “Governor Belcher’s Lady”. Over the subsequent 270 years, women have published thousands of articles in the Royal Society journals in all fields of science, from astronomy to evolution, physics to crystallography.