Isabella Helen Lugoski Karle  is an American x-ray crystallographer. Isabella Lugoski Karle was born on December 2, 1921, in Detroit, Michigan. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in physical chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1941 and 1942. After receiving her doctorate, Karle worked at the University of Chicago on the Manhattan Project synthesizing plutonium compounds. She then returned to the University of Michigan as a chemistry instructor for two years. In 1942 she had married Jerome Karle, then a chemistry student. In 1946 she and her husband joined the Naval Research Laboratory, where she worked as a physicist from 1946 to 1959. In 1959 she became head of the X-ray analysis section, a position she maintained through the 1990s. 

Karle has received numerous awards including the Superior Civilian Service Award of the Navy Department in 1965, the Hildebrand Award in 1970, and the Garvan Award of the American Chemical Society in 1976. She has received several honorary doctorates. Her most recent awards have been the Gregori Aminoff Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Bijvoet Medal from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1990, and a National Medal of Science in 1995, the United States' highest scientic honor. She has written over 250 scientific articles.