Lise Meitner (1878 - 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, the process at the heart of atomic energy and weapons. [1] Working for decades in Berlin alongside the chemist Otto Hahn, she and her nephew Otto Frisch supplied the theoretical explanation for the splitting of the uranium nucleus. [3] Although Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery, Meitner is now widely honoured, including through the element meitnerium, which bears her name. [4]
Early life and education
Lise Meitner was born on 1 November 1878 in Vienna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a Jewish family. [1] At a time when higher education was largely closed to women, she pursued private study before entering the University of Vienna, where she attended the lectures of Ludwig Boltzmann and earned a doctorate in physics in 1905. [1] She was among the first women to receive a physics doctorate from the university. [2]
Career in Berlin
In 1907 Meitner moved to Berlin, beginning a long scientific collaboration with the chemist Otto Hahn at what became the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. [1] She worked initially without a salary and in makeshift conditions, but rose to head the institute's physics section and to hold a professorship at the University of Berlin. [2] Over three decades the pair investigated radioactivity, and together they identified the element protactinium. [1]
Discovery of nuclear fission
After Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, Meitner, who was of Jewish descent, fled to Sweden while continuing to correspond with her Berlin colleagues. [1] When Hahn and Fritz Strassmann found that bombarding uranium with neutrons produced barium, Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch provided the explanation: the uranium nucleus had split into lighter elements, releasing a large amount of energy. [3] Frisch gave the process the name nuclear fission. [3] Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery, an omission of Meitner that many later historians came to regard as a notable injustice. [1]
Later life and legacy
Meitner declined an invitation to join the Manhattan Project, unwilling to work on an atomic bomb. [1] She remained in Sweden for many years before moving to Cambridge, England, where she died on 27 October 1968, days before her ninetieth birthday. [1] Her honours included the Max Planck Medal, the Enrico Fermi Award, and the Otto Hahn Prize. [2] In 1997 element 109 was named meitnerium in her memory, making her one of the very few scientists commemorated by a chemical element. [4]
