Frances Arnold Trivia
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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
Directed evolution of enzymes is breeding brought down to the level of molecules, and her made-to-order proteins now help produce fuels and medicines without harsh chemicals.
Q 02In 2017 Arnold was named to a Caltech professorship honouring which double Nobel laureate?
Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling won the Chemistry prize while at Caltech and later the Peace prize, and Arnold took the chair in his name after 17 years as the Dickinson Professor.
Q 03In 2019 Arnold joined the board of directors of which company?
Alphabet
Alphabet, the parent of Google, appointed her days after Sundar Pichai succeeded co-founder Larry Page as chief executive, making her the third woman then on its board.
Q 04Arnold served as external co-chair of which president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden named her co-chair in January 2021, days before he took office, to serve beside geophysicist Maria Zuber and his science adviser, the geneticist Eric Lander.
Q 05Arnold's father William Howard Arnold worked at Westinghouse in which field?
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics: he took his doctorate at Princeton and then helped design the pressurised water reactors that went into power stations around the world.
Q 06Arnold grew up in the suburbs and neighbourhoods of which Pennsylvania city?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh was home from her birth in 1956: she went to school in Edgewood and then Squirrel Hill, and left the family house at 17 to live on her own.
Q 07As a high schooler Arnold hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., to protest which war?
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War drew her to the capital at 15, though she decided later that she was 'much better at fixing things than protesting'.
Q 08Which two jobs did the teenage Arnold hold while living on her own?
Cocktail waitress and cab driver
Cocktail waitress and cab driver: at 17 she told a jazz club owner she was 22 to get hired, and at 18 she was steering a big Yellow Cab around town.
Q 09Before turning to chemical engineering, Arnold took her Princeton degree in which branch of engineering?
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering, formally mechanical and aerospace, had the fewest required courses, which left her free to study economics and foreign languages.
Q 10Arnold spent a year off from Princeton working in a factory in which country?
Italy
Italy: after her second year she worked in a plant making nuclear reactor parts, and by her own account went all the way to Istanbul and back that summer on a 1956 Moto Guzzi.
Q 11After Princeton, Arnold worked at a Colorado energy institute, renamed what in 1991?
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
National Renewable Energy Laboratory was the name, and the status, that the first President Bush gave the Solar Energy Research Institute, where Arnold had helped write United Nations papers on solar power.
Q 12After Princeton, Arnold worked as an engineer in South Korea and which South American country?
Brazil
Brazil: by her own account she backpacked from Ecuador to São Paulo on about two dollars a day to take up an internship on solar energy projects.
Q 13Arnold earned her Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1985 from which university?
UC Berkeley
Q 21Which technique did Arnold use to pepper an enzyme's gene with random mutations in her 1993 experiment?
Error-prone PCR
Error-prone PCR copies a gene sloppily on purpose, scattering random typos through it, so every round hands evolution a fresh library of mutants to choose from.
Q 22Instead of ethanol, Arnold's evolved enzymes turn plant sugars into which four-carbon alcohol?
Isobutanol
Isobutanol had a catch: two enzymes on the route needed a helper molecule that sugar-fed bacteria run short of without oxygen, so her team evolved them to use the one the cells make plenty of.
Q 23Arnold evolved which drug-metabolising enzyme family to perform reactions unknown in biology?
Cytochrome P450
UC Berkeley drew her in 1981 with its biofuel research, but that funding died in the Reagan years and she moved into the young field of biotechnology instead.
Q 14Why was Arnold made to take undergraduate chemistry courses early in her doctorate?
No prior background in the subject
No prior background in the subject: the future Chemistry laureate admitted she 'knew nothing about chemistry' on arrival, then cleared every undergraduate course in twelve months.
Q 15Arnold's doctorate used a column lined with chemical 'bait' to purify proteins, a form of which technique?
Chromatography
Chromatography: in her affinity version the column grabs only the wanted molecule while everything else washes past, just what the infant biotech industry needed.
Q 16How long after joining Caltech did Arnold make full professor?
10 years
10 years: she came in 1986 as a visiting associate and made full professor in 1996, though colleagues had sniffed that 'gentlemen don't do random mutagenesis'.
Q 17Directed evolution works through repeated rounds of mutagenesis and what?
Screening for improved function
Screening for improved function is the selection step: like a breeder choosing which animals to mate, she keeps only the best variants and mutates them again.
Q 18In her seminal 1993 work, Arnold evolved a version of which enzyme to work in the solvent DMF?
Subtilisin E
Subtilisin E normally digests proteins in water, and three generations of random mutation left her with a version that thrived in a solvent which cripples the original.
Q 19Roughly how much better in solvent was Arnold's evolved 1993 enzyme than the original?
250 times
250 times, near enough: the measured figure was 256, won by ten mutations whose combined benefit nobody could have worked out in advance.
Q 20In her 1993 experiment, Arnold tested mutant enzymes on their ability to break down which milk protein?
Casein
Casein made a handy test: her enzyme digests it naturally, so whichever mutant still broke it down best in the harsh solvent went on to parent the next generation.
Cytochrome P450 enzymes normally add oxygen to the drugs we swallow, and her evolved versions insert carbon or nitrogen instead, chemistry that life had never invented.
Q 24In 2016 Arnold's lab coaxed a bacterial protein into bonding carbon to which element?
Silicon
Silicon: no living thing is known to join it to carbon, yet after three rounds of evolution a hot-spring microbe's protein did it 15 times better than chemists' best catalyst.
Q 25Enzymes bred by Arnold's method let Merck make Januvia without toxic heavy metals; which condition does the drug treat?
Type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes: swapping a rhodium catalyst for an evolved enzyme made Januvia cheaper to produce and, by Arnold's account, cut solvent waste by 60 per cent.
Q 26Gevo, co-founded by Arnold in 2005, has turned plant sugars into renewable fuel for what?
Aircraft
Aircraft: Gevo's engineered yeast turns plant sugars into an alcohol that chemistry then upgrades into renewable jet fuel.
Q 27Arnold co-founded Provivi in 2013 to offer farmers a greener alternative to what?
Pesticides
Pesticides: instead of killing insects, the company copies the scents they use to find a mate and confuses them with it, so the pests never get to breed.
Q 28In 2016 Arnold joined the board of which maker of DNA sequencers?
Illumina
Illumina put her on its board in January 2016, the first of two big technology companies to give the lab scientist a seat in the boardroom.
Q 29Accounts of Arnold's Nobel-winning method often cite which household product as an everyday home for evolved enzymes?
Laundry detergent
Laundry detergent: stain-digesting enzymes must survive hot water and harsh chemicals, exactly the kind of toughness her method breeds into proteins.
Q 30In 2011 Arnold became the first woman to receive which National Academy of Engineering award?
Draper Prize
Draper Prize winners share $500,000 and the award has been called engineering's Nobel, so hers came seven years ahead of the real thing.