As suggested by others, "Noether's Theorem" by Emmy Noether is also an incredibly important and fundamental idea in physics. "Noether's Theorem states that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law."

Maryam Mirzakhani is probably the most impressive of these. She was a first-rate mathematician. But even she was not on the level of Einstein, Newton, nor Archimedes.

Ada Lovelace was an intellectual zero.

Not sure we have anything substantial on which to judge Hypatia's exact intellectual level. But base rate obviously suggests "not Einstein's".

@jim Agreed. And while Mirzakhani is impressive (probably fair to say she's up there with Tao, as written. Here I refer to Tao as a "quasi-genius"), I doubt either of them could compare to Newton or Einstein

@jim

"Maryam Mirzakhani is probably the most impressive of these. She was a first-rate mathematician. But even she was not on the level of Einstein, Newton, nor Archimedes."

Please read my comment on why Einstein, Newton, and Archimedes have overinflated status: https://manifold.markets/stardust/are-these-5-women-on-the-level-of-e#ci3kpvmkcqo

Sure, Ada might have been an intellectual zero. But remember that without her, you would not have the computer or phone in your hands right now. She was the first to have the idea that computers could be used for something other than mathematical computations. Without her there would be no idea or interest in such a thing.

@Gameknight

Sure, Ada might have been an intellectual zero. But remember that without her, you would not have the computer or phone in your hands right now. She was the first to have the idea that computers could be used for something other than mathematical computations. Without her there would be no idea or interest in such a thing.

I will note that if you cede this, then the "but Musk didn't do all the research himself" argument holds zero water

@jim Hypatia is actually probably the best example. I have no doubt that she was smarter than the rest of the women on the list for the same reason why Newton and Einstein beat out modern geniuses, and why Archimedes and Plato beat out Enlightenment-era people. People back then were just smarter

I think this is very hard to evaluate correctly/fairly without understanding the technical details of the advancements these people put forward.

@Nightsquared That's why I've put the "for those who need extra convincing" comment in here. I want to look beyond the mythical status of these great physicists and mathemticians to look at whether their intelligence is really beyond women today, which was the original topic of debate with @stardust. They were first to critical discoveries because women were usually barred from education in a time where many disciplines were new or undiscovered. The fact that I can create a lot of doubt here is a sign that women today are not necessarily lesser than the men of myth.

For those who need extra convincing:

Newton copied the inverse-square relation for his law of gravity (which is actually only a close approximation; Einstein's general relativity is currently accepted as most accurate) from other people.

Einstein's special relativity (i.e. time and space are different for different observers and the speed of light is constant) was actually implied by Lorentz's transformation equations, but Lorentz just didn't have the balls to say that part out loud - and Einstein did. (By the way, Lorentz admitted this himself and agreed that the credit for special relativity should go to Einstein, but you get my point). If you need convincing, this is from wikipedia: "Some of the work of Albert Einstein in special relativity is built on the earlier work by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré."

These people absolutely deserve their fair share of fame and recognition, but remember that everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Neither Einstein nor Newton came up with their ideas on the spot - it was only by looking at work done by others did they make their masterpiece breakthroughs.

Edit: Here's something else from a discussion on Newtion's F=ma:

Newton’s second law is not derivable. It is part of an overall synthesis of ideas about forces and motion based on observations and conclusions that many had done over the centuries by many natural philosophers.

Aristotle, for example, had written extensively about motion and how things moved and what caused motion, and how what we call time entered into those notions.

Centuries before Galileo and his experiments and Descartes and his mathematical approach to understanding frames of reference in motion with respect to each other, people had tried to understand how things fell - how to describe a falling object. It was Galileo that deduced that things fell with constant acceleration.

So Newton’s deductions (when he was on hiatus from Cambridge’s Trinity College during the plague), was the culmination of lots of ideas and observations that had been around a long time. But his second law was not derived, and it preceded his (and Leibniz’s) development of calculus.

Again, my point is not that his contributions were irrelevant, but that he's not this unachievable genius. He basically just summarized what other people had seen or said at the time, and added his own bit to it.

In terms of "advancement from previous knowledge," scientists make the same contributions as Newton all the time - it's just that their contributions are usually in a specialized field, and are not particularly publicized as much. But in terms of intelligence and progress (which was what I was arguing about with @stardust ), these women are not inferior.

Edit 2: Archimedes is also not as mythical as you might believe. He did indeed make many groundbreaking discoveries; but it was at a time where there was ground to break. The field was new to absolutely everybody. Even I can tell you that water in a container rises when you put something in it. He was just first. Why wasn't a woman first? Because that was at a time where the women were told to stay in the house and take care of the children, and were not formally educated. Archimedes was first to many fields, and dug the first groundbreaking 5 meters into the Quarry of Knowledge (Again, not devaluing his achievements; he was indeed necessarily smarter than his peers to get to so many things first. But at the same time, his fame is because he was first, not because he was some unreachable genius). But nowadays, each field has been dug to 5 kilometers deep; the same 5 meters of advancement that was "groundbreaking" before is now barely noticeable to someone on the surface (i.e. not deeply acquainted with the field) looking in. In this regard, Marie Curie is even more impressive than she appears to be, because she has replaced even the original discoverer of radioactivity as the face of the field. We all know Marie Curie; but do you know who discovered radioactivity and started the whole discipline? I sure don't. To overshadow the guy who literally made your field is an incredible achievement.

Edit 3:

Einstein made a humongous leap into special relativity, and even knowing the fact that he built off of previous work, I would agree with @jim that he is still definitely unparalleled. But he is surely an outlier - no woman or man has come close to surpassing him in history or in the present.