Maria Göppert Mayer (1906-1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist who developed the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus, work for which she received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.[1] She was the second woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, after Marie Curie, and spent much of her career overcoming barriers that limited professional opportunities for married women in academia.
Early life and education
Maria Göppert was born on 28 June 1906 in Katowice, then Kattowitz in the German Empire and now part of Poland, into a family with a long tradition of university professors.[1] She studied at the University of Göttingen, at the time a leading center of the emerging field of quantum mechanics, and earned her doctorate in 1930 under the supervision of Max Born.[1] Her dissertation examined the theory of two-photon absorption by atoms, a prediction that could only be tested experimentally decades later with the advent of the laser.
Career
In 1930 she married the American chemist Joseph Edward Mayer and moved to the United States. For much of her early career, anti-nepotism rules and prevailing attitudes toward married women largely excluded her from paid faculty appointments, and she frequently held unpaid or nominal positions at institutions including Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University.[1] During the Second World War she took part in research connected with the atomic bomb program. She later joined Argonne National Laboratory and, in 1960, became a full professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.
The nuclear shell model
At Argonne, Göppert Mayer sought to explain why nuclei containing certain numbers of protons or neutrons, the so-called 'magic numbers,' are unusually stable.[1] She proposed that nucleons occupy discrete energy levels, or shells, and that strong spin-orbit coupling accounts for the observed pattern of stability. The German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen arrived at the same conclusion independently, and the two later collaborated on a book setting out the theory.
Legacy
In 1963 Göppert Mayer shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Jensen and Eugene Wigner for their contributions to the understanding of nuclear structure.[2] She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was later inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The Maria Goeppert Mayer Award of the American Physical Society, which honors early-career women in physics, is named for her and continues to recognize her lasting influence on the field.
