The award of the Nobel economics prize to Elinor Ostrom brings the number of female laureates in 2009 to five. That easily breaks the previous record of three women winners in 2004.

In addition to Prof Ostrom, this year's laureates include Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider in medicine; Ada Yonath in chemistry; and Herta Müller in literature.

“What fabulous role models to affirm that we can achieve great things and be noticed and celebrated for them, at the highest levels,” said Kathy Sykes, professor of public understanding of science at Bristol University in the UK.

This year's female boost takes the total number of women who have won any of the six Nobel prizes to 40 – a meagre figure compared with 762 male winners.

Although Marie Curie won both physics and chemistry prizes (in 1903 and 1911 respectively) the Nobels remained virtually a male preserve until after the Second World War.

Since then, there has been a growing trickle of women winning in literature, peace and medicine. But the two fields graced by Curie remain depressingly male. Only one woman has won the physics prize since her – Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963 – while Ada Yonath this year is only the fourth female laureate in chemistry.

Nobel prizes – with occasional exceptions such as Barack Obama's peace prize – are a lagging indicator of achievement; the three physics laureates this year were honoured for discoveries in the 1960s. So there is expectation that women will make up a rising proportion of future laureates, just as they are penetrating the bastions of scientific achievement such as the US National Academy of Sciences.