Born: 2 December 1921, United States
Died: 3 October 2017
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Isabella Helen Lugoski
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Isabella Karle was an American chemist who was instrumental in developing techniques to extract plutonium chloride from a mixture containing plutonium oxide when she worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Together with her husband, Jerome, they advanced the field of X-ray crystallography by enabling the determination of the structure of crystals, which played a significant role in the development of new pharmaceutical products and other synthesized materials.
In 1985, Jerome Karle and mathematician Herbert Hauptman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing ways to analyze X-ray data. Many in the crystallography community felt Isabella Karle should have shared the prize.
Karle died in 2017.
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Isabella Karle was one of the many overlooked spouses, whose collaboration with her husband Jerome meant many people credited only him for work they did together. Jerome and Herbert A. Hauptman shared the 1985 Nobel in Chemistry for developing crystal structure determination methods, which enabled scientists to use maths to identify molecular structure rather than having to use X-ray crystallography, saving time and increasing precision. “It is almost impossible to give an example in the field of chemistry where this method is not being used,” noted one Nobel judge. Isabella made vital contributions to that work, yet she was excluded. When Jerome first found out he had won, he reputedly immediately asked whether Isabella had won as well. It’s unclear whether he protested when he found out she hadn’t. She was also one of the youngest scientists on the Manhattan Project. Of their collaborations, Isabella later told the Washington Post, “I do the physical applications, he works with the theoretical. It makes a good team. Science requires both types.”
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
1921, Dec. 2 Born Isabella Helen Lugoski, Detroit, Mich.
1941 B.S., chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
1942 M.S., physical chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Married Jerome Karle (died 2013)
1944 Ph.D., physical chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Research Associate, Manhattan Project, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
1944-1946 Chemistry instructor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
1946-2009 Physicist, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. (Head of Laboratory for the Structure of Matter X-Ray Analysis Section beginning in 1968)
1965 Awarded Navy Superior Civilian Service Award
1968 Awarded Society of Women Engineers Annual Achievement Award
1970 Awarded American Chemical Society Hillebrand Prize
1973 Awarded Federal Woman’s Award
1976 President, American Crystallographic Association
Awarded American Chemical Society Garvan Medal
1978 Elected to National Academy of Sciences
1980 Awarded Captain Robert Dexter Conrad Award for Scientific Achievement, Office of Naval Research
1984 Awarded American Institute of Chemists Chemical Pioneer Award
1986 Awarded Women in Science and Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award (WISE)
1987 Awarded Secretary of the Navy Distinguished Achievement in Science Award
1988 Awarded Gregory Aminoff Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Awarded Navy League Rear Admiral William S. Parsons Award
1991 Awarded National Institutes of Health Paul Ehrlich Prize
1992 Awarded American Peptide Society Vincent du Vigneaud Award
Elected to American Philosophical Society
1993 Awarded the Franklin Institute Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science
Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1995 Awarded National Medal of Science, Chemistry
Awarded National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences
Awarded Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award
1997 Awarded American Chemical Society Ralph Hirschmann Award in Peptide Science
1998 Awarded Naval Research Laboratory Lifetime Achievement Award
2002 Awarded Office of Naval Research Fred E. Saalfeld Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science
2017, Oct. 3 Died, Arlington, Va.