Maria Goeppert Mayer

When physicist Enrico Fermi, on his way out of her office to take a phone call, asked whether there was any indication of spin-orbit coupling, immediately recognized the answer -- with Fermi himself surprised at how quickly she connected it -- leading directly to the nuclear shell model.

Became the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the nuclear shell model, achieved while holding only a voluntary or part-time appointment rather than a full professorship.

Worked for nine years without a regular academic appointment at Johns Hopkins, on what a National Academy of Sciences memoir calls a "very modest assistantship" with no title, because a nepotism rule barred hiring her alongside her physicist husband.

Sustaining nine years of unpaid or underpaid work under this institutional barrier is part of the basis for the profile's persistence score. Persistence

Shortly after finally receiving a full, regular professorship at UC San Diego in 1960, suffered a stroke that left an arm paralyzed, yet continued teaching and publishing, including a 1966 review article, until her death in 1972.

Continuing to teach and publish after this documented setback is part of the basis for the profile's discipline score. Discipline