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50 free Frances Arnold trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Frances Arnold hitchhiked to Washington to protest the Vietnam War, drove a cab and waitressed at a jazz club in high school, chose mechanical engineering because it was "the easiest way to get into Princeton," and arrived at Berkeley for a chemical engineering Ph.D. with no chemistry background at all. Then she taught enzymes to evolve on demand and won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the first American woman to do so. This Frances Arnold trivia quiz runs 50 questions across her life and work: her nuclear-physicist father, Taylor Allderdice High School, the year in an Italian reactor-parts factory, solar energy work in Korea and Brazil, the Berkeley Ph.D., Caltech, the 1993 subtilisin experiment that launched directed evolution, error-prone PCR and casein halos, cytochrome P450 and isobutanol, Gevo and Provivi, the Draper and Millennium prizes, the Nobel she shared with George Smith and Gregory Winter, the boards of Illumina and Alphabet, PCAST, and her cameo on The Big Bang Theory. Easy questions come first; the final third is for people who know their SCHEMA from their NADPH. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's biography of Arnold, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. If you enjoy this quiz, try our chemistry and Nobel Prize quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Frances Arnold won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering which technique?
Directed evolution of enzymes
The other half of that year's prize went to George Smith and Gregory Winter for phage display.
Q 02Arnold's endowed professorship is named after which double Nobel laureate?
Linus Pauling
She was named Linus Pauling Professor in 2017 after 17 years as the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor.
Q 03In 2019 Arnold joined the board of directors of which company, becoming its third woman director?
Alphabet
She has also sat on the board of a genomics company since 2016.
Q 04Arnold served as external co-chair of which president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology?
Joe Biden
She had worked with the transition team to identify scientists for roles in the administration.
Q 05Arnold's father William Howard Arnold worked in which field?
Nuclear physics
Her grandfather of the same name was a lieutenant general.
Q 06Arnold grew up in the suburbs and neighbourhoods of which American city?
Pittsburgh
She lived in Edgewood, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1974.
Q 07As a high schooler Arnold hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., to protest which war?
The Vietnam War
She had moved out of home as a teenager and supported herself with two jobs.
Q 08Which two jobs did the teenage Arnold hold while living on her own?
Cocktail waitress and cab driver
Her independence produced a pile of absences and low grades but near-perfect standardised test scores.
Q 09Arnold applied to Princeton in which subject, calling it "the easiest way to get in"?
Mechanical engineering
Princeton was her father's alma mater; she graduated in 1979 focused on solar energy research.
Q 10Arnold took a year off from Princeton to work in a factory in which country?
Italy
The factory made nuclear reactor parts; she also studied Russian and Italian and imagined becoming a diplomat or CEO.
Q 11After Princeton, Arnold worked at a Colorado solar institute, renamed what in 1991?
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
She designed solar facilities for remote locations and helped write United Nations position papers.
Q 12Besides the United States, in which two countries did Arnold work as an engineer after graduating?
South Korea and Brazil
Sustainable energy became a lasting focus of her research.
Q 13Arnold earned her Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1985 from which university?
UC Berkeley
She was made to take undergraduate chemistry courses in her first year there.
Q 21Which mutation-generating technique did Arnold use across four sequential rounds in the 1993 study?
Error-prone PCR
Introducing errors deliberately mimics natural variation but on a laboratory timescale.
Q 22Arnold used directed evolution to make enzymes that convert sugars directly into which fuel precursor?
Isobutanol
She had to evolve the pathway to use the cofactor NADH, which E. coli makes, instead of NADPH.
Q 23Arnold evolved which enzyme family to perform cyclopropanation and carbene-transfer reactions?
Cytochrome P450
These are reactions chemists knew from the flask but which biology had never bothered to invent.
Q 14Why did the graduate committee make Arnold take undergraduate chemistry courses in her first Ph.D. year?
No prior background in the subject
Her thesis was carried out in Harvey Blanch's lab.
Q 15Arnold's Ph.D. thesis, in the lab of Harvey Blanch, investigated which technique?
Affinity chromatography
It was during the doctorate that she became deeply interested in biochemistry.
Q 16Arnold became a full professor at Caltech in which year?
1996
She was named Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor in 2000 and took a more famous chair in 2017.
Q 17Directed evolution works through repeated rounds of mutagenesis and what?
Screening for improved function
Natural selection can only act on existing variation over long periods; Arnold speeds it up in the lab.
Q 18In her seminal 1993 work, Arnold evolved a version of which enzyme to work in the solvent DMF?
Subtilisin E
After four rounds of mutation she had an enzyme 256 times more active in DMF than the original.
Q 19How much more active in DMF was Arnold's evolved 1993 enzyme than the original?
256 times
She spotted the winners by the size of the halos they left on agar plates.
Q 20In the 1993 experiment, Arnold screened bacteria for enzymes that could break down which milk protein?
Casein
A working enzyme produced a visible halo on the agar plate; the biggest halos went on to the next round.
Q 24Arnold's evolved bacterial fuel pathway needed NADPH, but E. coli makes which cofactor?
NADH
Rather than change the bacterium, she evolved the pathway's enzymes to accept what the cell already made.
Q 25What is Arnold's method for predicting how protein parts recombine into working chimeras called?
SCHEMA
It predicts which pieces of different proteins can be joined without wrecking their parental structure.
Q 26Arnold co-founded which company in 2005 to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources?
Gevo
In 2013 she and two former students founded Provivi for crop protection.
Q 27Provivi, co-founded by Arnold in 2013, researches alternatives to what?
Pesticides
Her co-founders Peter Meinhold and Pedro Coelho were former students.
Q 28Arnold joined the corporate board of which genomics company in 2016?
Illumina
She is also co-inventor on more than 40 U.S. patents.
Q 29Arnold is co-inventor on more than how many U.S. patents?
40
Many cover evolved enzymes and the methods for making them.
Q 30In 2011 Arnold became the first woman to receive which National Academy of Engineering award?
Draper Prize
She also received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation the same year.