10 questions · Society & Everyday
Lise Meitner is born in Vienna in 1878, at a time when girls are barred from higher education. She studies privately, sits her school-leaving exams late and becomes one of the first women to earn a doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna. In 1907 she moves to Berlin, where the chemist Otto Hahn becomes her research partner: but as a woman she is at first only allowed to enter the institute through the back door and has to work in a basement. For more than three decades Meitner and Hahn study radioactivity together; in 1918 they discover the element protactinium. In 1938 history tears her life apart: as a Jew, Meitner has to flee Nazi Germany and finds a meagre refuge in Sweden. At that very moment, Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann in Berlin stumble on a baffling result: bombarding uranium with neutrons suddenly produces the much lighter element barium. Puzzled, Hahn writes to his old colleague. On a winter walk in the Swedish snow, Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch provide the explanation: the uranium nucleus has split: like a droplet of water dividing in two. She calculates the energy released and coins the term "nuclear fission" for the process. With that she had provided the theoretical foundation for both nuclear power and the atomic bomb: though she later deliberately refused to take part in its military use. In 1944 Otto Hahn alone receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission: Meitner's crucial share goes unmentioned. It is regarded as one of the most famous misjudgements in Nobel history. Late recognition came all the same: the heavy element 109 is named meitnerium in her honour: making her one of the very few women to have a chemical element named after them.
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nuclear fission
She interpreted that the uranium nucleus splits into two lighter nuclei when struck by neutrons.
💡 Did you know? Meitner was the first to explain theoretically what had happened in Hahn's experiment: the atomic nucleus had actually been split.
nuclear fission
Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch gave the process its name, „nuclear fission.“
💡 Did you know? They compared the splitting nucleus to a droplet of water dividing into two parts.
Otto Hahn
Their partnership in Berlin lasted more than 30 years.
💡 Did you know? Meitner and Otto Hahn worked together for over 30 years: at first, as a woman, she was allowed to work only in a basement lab.
Hahn received the Nobel Prize alone
It is regarded as one of the best-known misjudgements in the history of the Nobel Prize.
💡 Did you know? In 1944 Hahn alone received the Nobel Prize for fission: Meitner's exclusion is seen as one of the great injustices in the history of science.
persecution as a Jew (Nazi era)
She found refuge in Sweden, from where she helped interpret nuclear fission.
💡 Did you know? As a Jew, Meitner had to flee Nazi Germany in 1938 under dramatic circumstances, with only a few belongings.
Otto Frisch
Together with her nephew Otto Frisch, Meitner provided the crucial physical interpretation of fission in her Swedish exile.
💡 Did you know? The decisive idea came to them during a winter walk together in the Swedish snow.
protactinium
A radioactive element with atomic number 91.
💡 Did you know? As early as 1918 Meitner and Hahn together discovered the chemical element protactinium.
meitnerium (element 109)
In her honour the artificial element 109 is named „meitnerium“: a rare distinction for a woman scientist.
💡 Did you know? She is one of very few women with an element named after them: alongside Marie Curie (curium).
refused to work on the atomic bomb
She turned down an invitation to join the US atomic-bomb project (the Manhattan Project).
💡 Did you know? Meitner flatly refused to work on the atomic bomb: „I will have nothing to do with a bomb.“
Foto: Harris & Ewing · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner (1878 to 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who first explained nuclear fission theoretically.
💡 Did you know? Meitner was called „the German Marie Curie“: yet the Nobel Prize for her discovery went to her colleague Otto Hahn alone.
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