Browse this section for short profiles of some of the thousands of Jewish women found throughout jwa.org. We will be adding new profiles to this section regularly and welcome your suggestions for women to add.
Shulamith Nardi helped shape relations between Jews and gentiles in the fledgling State of Israel through her analysis of Jewish literature and her work as advisor on Diaspora affairs to four Israeli presidents.
Antique dealer Lillian Nassau rekindled the public’s enthusiasm for art deco and art nouveau at a time when Tiffany lamps were being destroyed for their bronze.
Rachel Natelson helped found Hadassah and devoted herself to Zionist organizations, but never achieved her dream of traveling to Palestine.
Although her writing was never published in her lifetime, Grace Seixas Nathan’s poetry and letters showed her passion for her country, her family, and her religion.
With a lifelong passion for both theater and history, Adele Gutman Nathan made a career of creating historical pageants, leading to her crowning achievement, writing a guide for Americans to celebrate their country’s bicentennial.
After her daughter’s death, Maud Nathan battled grief by throwing herself into social justice work, transforming herself from a simple society wife to influential social reformer.
Ceramicist Gertrud Amon Natzler and her husband Otto created thousands of stunning ceramics together, an exquisite collaboration that continued even after her death.
Elsie Margaret Binger Naumburg put her research into rare South American birds on hold during WWII to aid a different breed of songbird: refugee and unemployed musicians.
By creating her own school and her own system of education based on principles of psychoanalysis, Margaret Naumburg laid the groundwork for the new discipline of art therapy.
A born saleswoman, Carrie Marcus Neiman made her family’s department stores synonymous with high-end retail fashion.
First censored and then killed during the Holocaust, novelist Irène Némirovsky finally achieved the recognition she deserved long after her death.
Sheryl Baron Nestel’s activism in the childbirth reform movement led to her investigation of how race and racism affect healthcare.
Driven by the concern that “the colonized are condemned to lose their memory,” lesbian writer and activist Joan Nestle created the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
A pioneer of the study of adult development and aging, Bernice Levin Neugarten found that there was no one right way for people to grow old.
Elsa Neumann earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Berlin in 1899, nine years before women were officially allowed to study there, becoming the university’s first woman graduate.
Louise Nevelson transformed the concept of sculpture from an object the audience walks around to a space the audience can enter into.
Pauline Newman made massive strides for workers’ rights, especially women workers, by building bridges between many different factions.
Estelle Reiss Newman innovated new programs for aiding the blind, from providing retirement homes for the aged blind to helping younger disabled people navigate independent lives in their communities.
Isadora Newman’s creativity defied categorization, spilling across the boundaries of poetry, fiction, painting, and playwriting, but always returned to the African American and Creole influences of her New Orleans heritage.
A proud lesbian feminist writer, Lesléa Newman made history in 1989 with her controversial children’s book, Heather Has Two Mommies.
Blanche Cohen Nirenstein found a myriad of ways to help Jewish widows and needy children, from founding a kosher summer camp to supporting Holocaust survivors.
Galina Nizhnikov Veremkroit risked her own safety to become one of the first female refuseniks to protest for the right to leave Soviet Russia.
Praised by many, including Albert Einstein, as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, Emmy Noether helped develop abstract algebra and crafted a theorem explaining the connection between symmetry and conservation laws in physics.
How to cite this page
Jewish Women's Archive. "People." (Viewed on March 2, 2015) <http://jwa.org/people/toc/N>.