Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner was born on November 7, 1878 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now in Austria). She was an Austrian-born physicist. She was a part of the team that discovered and explained nuclear fission and foresaw its explosive potential.
In 1906, Meitner became the second woman to obtain a doctorate degree from the University of Vienna. After getting her degree she left for Berlin with support from her parents, and she attended Max Planck’s lectures in 1907 and joined Hahn in research on radioactivity.
During three decades of association, she and Otto Hahn were among the first to isolate the isotope protactinium-231 ( which they named), studied nuclear isomerism and beta decay and in the 1930s (along with Strassmann) investigated the products of neutron bombardment of uranium.
In 1913, she got a permanent position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Much like Marie and Irene Curie, she handled X-ray equipment during WW1, returning to Berlin in 1916.
In 1917, Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered the isotope of protactinium. Meitner was awarded the Leibniz Medal and her own physics section at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry.
Meitner discovered the cause of the Auger effect in 1922. In 1926, she began her research on nuclear fission while also being the first woman to teach as a full physics professor at the University of Berlin. At the time the research was theoretical, and many knew about the prospect and the honor of the Nobel Prize waiting for the winner who discovered it first.
However, this research was interrupted when Hitler came into power. Meitner remained in Germany longer than most because of her Austrian citizenship, but eventually she had to be snuck across the Dutch border in 1928, leaving behind all her possessions at the time.
Although, upon her arrival in Stockholm, Sweden, her work continued. She worked in Manne Siegbahn’s laboratory and developed a working relationship with Niels Bohr, while still corresponding with German scientists.
After Hahn and Strassmann had demonstrated that barium appears in neutron-bombarded uranium. Meitner working with her nephew Otto Frisch, elucidated the physical characteristics of this division and in January 1939 proposed the term fission (which Frisch elicited from American biophysicist William Arnold) for the process.
In 1944, Hahn received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering nuclear fission, though some have argued that Meitner merited a share of the award.
This discovery along with Meitner’s recognition of the explosive potential of the process, motivated Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein to contact President Roosevelt, leading to the establishment of the Manhattan Project.
During this she was invited to work on the Manhattan Project (1942-1945) in the United States. Meitner opposed the atomic bomb, however, and she rejected the offer. After WWII, Meitner continued working in Sweden. She also traveled throughout the U.S.
to give lectures.
She retired to England in 1960. Eight years later in October 1968, she died and her tombstone bears the inscription “A physicist who never lost her humanity.” The chemical element meitnerium was later named in her honour.
