Esther Marley Conwell (May 23, 1922 – November 16, 2014) was a pioneering American chemist and physicist, best known for the Conwell-Weisskopf theory that describes how electrons travel through semiconductors, a breakthrough that helped revolutionize modern computing.

In 1998, she joined the University of Rochester faculty full-time as a professor of chemistry, focused on the flow of electrons through DNA.

She initially planned to do a Ph.D. at Rochester, but since her adviser left to work at Los Alamos after her first year there, she completed her masters and obtained a Ph.D. at a later point in time.

Conwell collaborated with Karl Lark-Horovitz and Vivian Johnson at Purdue University on silicon and germanium semiconductor physics.

[6][7] Conwell received her physics Ph.D. in 1948, from the University of Chicago under the advisement of Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar at Yerkes Observatory and was also an assistant to Enrico Fermi.

She then worked as a researcher at Bell Laboratories (1951–1952) where she studied with William Shockley on the effects of high electric fields on electron transport in semiconductors.

Conwell was the associate director of the NSF Center for Photoinduced Charge Transfer at University of Rochester starting in 1991.

In 2006, the University of Rochester honored Conwell with a Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award for her efforts in advocating and promoting women in science.

"[14][12] She was nominated by Mildred Dresselhaus, a professor of physics and electrical engineering at MIT and a National Medals of Science winner.