Several women scientists have contributed to typhus research, which carried an exceptionally high risk of laboratory infection. The work of five of them, Ida Bengtson (1881-1952), Muriel Robertson (1883-1973), Hilda Sikora (1889-1974), Hélène Sparrow (1891-1970) and Clara Nigg (1897-1986), is reviewed and the names of several others are mentioned. The lives of these women seem typical of rickettsiologists and reflect the disasters that befell the world during the first half of the twentieth century.