Women in Chemistry Tour
Join our museum’s Gallery Guides for a “drop-in” tour highlighting the central role of women in shaping chemistry and the material sciences throughout history.
Mrs. M.K. Murray using nitrometer at the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory

Mrs. M.K. Murray using nitrometer at the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, April 1926.
Science History Institute
Our Women in Chemistry Tour profiles women chemists from antiquity to the present, sharing stories of innovation, resistance, and change.
On this tour you can expect to
- learn about the legendary founding women of alchemy,
- explore the connections between domesticity and distillation, and
- see how wartime changed the laboratory.
You’ll also get to know pioneering chemists and chemistry educators, from the 17th-century French alchemist Marie Meurdrac to Mary Maynard Daly, the first Black woman in America to receive a PhD in chemistry, and Rosalind Franklin, whose work in X-ray crystallography led to the discovery of DNA structure.
Drop-in tours take place twice a month on Saturdays. Admission is free and no reservations are necessary.