Lise meitner (1878 - 1968) was a pioneer physicist in the studies of radioactivity and nuclear fission. She is known as the mother of the atomic bomb; she was not the developer, but her studies were the basis for the creation of it.
This scientist is an example that, at times, the Nobel Prize committee ignored the contributions of a woman: Otto Hahn received, alone, the recognition of the Swedish academy for the discovery of nuclear fission (a term that was coined by Meitner).
Among other things, Meitner was one of the discoverers of the protactinium-231 isotope, she was also the second woman to obtain a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna (1905).
She held the positions of Professor and Head of the Physics Department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. During the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, Lise Meitner had to leave her country because of her Jewish ancestry.
He settled in Sweden, from where he published his research on the separation process that occurs when bombarding elements such as thorium or uranium with neutrons..
Article index
Elise Meitner was born on November 7, 1878 in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, Austria. Her family was a member of the local Jewish community and she was the daughter of Philipp Meitner and Hedwig Skovran, who economically could be classified as middle class..
Elise's father was a lawyer, and he was one of the first Jews to be admitted to the guild in Austria. The Meitner couple had a total of eight children, of which Elise was the third.
Although his father was of Jewish descent, he was open about religion and imposed none on his children; However, Elise decided to convert to Lutheranism when she was 29 years old..
From a very young age she was inclined to the academic area, especially for subjects related to science. At that time the education that women could receive in Austria was limited, but Philipp Meitner hired private tutors so that Elise would have proper instruction.
In 1892 Elise, who preferred to be called Lise, finished school and decided to continue her academic training in Education, which was the only career available to women at the time. Meitner chose to be a French teacher.
From 1900 Austrian universities began to admit women to scientific careers.
Lise Meitner hired a private teacher to instruct her in high school subjects that she couldn't take because she was a woman, preparing herself for the college entrance exam..
On the day of the test, Meitner attended the Akademisches Gymnasium along with 14 other young women and only four of them managed to pass and were selected to enter the University of Vienna in October 1901.
Among the teachers who had the greatest influence on Meitner was the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, for whom Lise had great admiration. She did her thesis on a Maxwell formula in 1905 and it was approved on November 28 of that year..
In early 1906, Lise Meitner graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics, making her the second woman to graduate from the University of Vienna. After earning her degree, Meitner wasn't sure where she could get a job.
He began by investigating optical phenomena on his own. Then he became interested in the study of radioactivity, which at the time was a promising and novel field within physics..
He carried out studies with alpha particles in which he noticed that the dispersion increased with the atomic mass of the metallic atoms, this was published in the journal Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1907.
Lise Meitner moved to Berlin in 1907, where she was invited as a listener to the classes of Max Plank, who taught at Friedrich Wilhelm University. That gesture from Plank was significant because he did not support female education, but Meitner's talent was considered special..
He began to create connections between the local scientific guild and thus met Otto Hahn, with whom Metiner began a working relationship. Women were not allowed to attend university in Berlin (then part of Prussia), so Meitner could not work in Hahn's laboratory.
However, physics was allocated a small space that used to be used for carpentry. Thus began his research on radioactive isotopes, which were then thought to be new elements..
The following year the Prussian laws changed and women could be admitted to the university campus, so Meitner's situation improved and he published three articles with Hahn. The scientific association of the two lasted several decades from 1907.
In 1912 Otto Hahn received a job offer from a new academic center specializing in chemistry called the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Months later Max Plank proposed to Lise Meitner that she work for him as an assistant at Friedrich Wilhelm University.
Thus it was that Meitner became the first woman to hold the position of scientific assistant in Prussia. In 1913 the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute offered physics the position of associate with a very low salary, which was raised after receiving various job offers that came from abroad..
On the eve of the Great War, Lise Meitner was trained as an x-ray technician. During July 1915, she joined the Austrian Army as a nurse and served in Poland and Italy until the end of 1916..
Meitner returned to his post at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in January 1917 and received a promotion along with a salary increase. At that time, he managed to isolate protactinium and describe its characteristics together with Hahn.
Lise Meitner traveled to Sweden in 1921, lectured at Lund University, where she became interested in a new approach to studying beta rays. Five years later she was the first woman to get the tenured position of Professor in Physics at a German university..
In his experimentation with beta radiation, it was concluded that the law of conservation of energy did not apply in the case of beta decay, but Meitner did not understand why and that conclusion seemed unacceptable..
While the political sphere of the 1930s was marked in Germany by the rise of Adolf Hitler to power, for Meitner it marked the beginning of what would be the great discovery of his life..
Hahn and Meitner were joined by Fritz Strassman, who was against the National Socialist ideology and resigned from the Society of German Chemists when it became part of the Nazi party..
They began to repeat the experiments carried out by Enrico Fermi to confirm that the isotope of protactinium was achieved through alpha decay. In that investigation, they found what they believed to be a large number of radioactive transmutation products..
When Germany and Austria were unified, in 1938, Lise Meitner found it necessary to leave the country, since she was of Jewish descent and with the union of both countries she had lost the protection that her nationality gave her against the anti-Semitic persecution of the nazis.
With the help of various scientific colleagues from various European countries, Meitner managed to get out of Germany. He couldn't take luggage with him so as not to arouse suspicion, nor money, so Hahn gave him a diamond ring to sell in an emergency..
Dirk Coster, the Dutch physicist who discovered the element hafnium, was with her as they crossed the Dutch border. After escaping from Nazi Germany, Meitner made his way to Stockholm, Sweden, where he settled..
Lise Meitner continued her research in the laboratory of the Manne Siegbahn Institute. However, she was not considered part of the staff, so she did not have sufficient resources to carry out her work..
With the help of his nephew Otto Frisch, Meitner found the explanation for a phenomenon reported by Hahn, which consisted of the separation of heavy elements into lighter elements. This process was called nuclear fission by both in 1939.
That same year he began making plans to move to England, but had to stop everything when World War II started..
He also received an invitation from his nephew to work on the Manhattan Project, but Meitner rejected it, since he did not agree with the warlike use of nuclear energy..
In the mid-1940s Lise Meitner traveled to the United States, where she was recognized as a celebrity in academia. He gave lectures at the most prestigious universities in the country, in addition, he met scientists such as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi.
In 1947 Meitner began working in the area of atomic research at the Royal Institute of Technology; two years later he obtained Swedish citizenship. Finally, the scientist retired in 1960 and moved to England, where a large part of her family lived..
Lise Meitner passed away on October 27, 1968 in Cambridge, England. She had moved to a nursing home, since her health was very delicate. In 1964 he had a heart attack and three years later he fractured his hip, in addition, he suffered from several strokes and atherosclerosis.
Between 1917 and 1918 after a series of tests and investigations, Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn were able to separate a mother isotope from the actinium product and describe its characteristics..
This element had been found independently by Fajans and Göhring, but they reached an agreement with Meitner to call it "protoactinium", which was later shortened to "protactinium", with the chemical symbol Pa.
After a series of experiments that consisted of bombarding uranium with neutrons, chemist Otto Hahn noticed that it appeared to be barium, something that did not seem to make sense according to the laws of radioactive decay..
Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch were responsible for finding the explanation for this process which they called nuclear fission and which, according to both, consisted of an atom with a heavy nucleus separating into two or more smaller nuclei to generate a large amount of energy..
To support his reasoning, Meitner used Borh's liquid drop model. The article by Meitner and Frisch in which nuclear fission was named and its operation explained was published in Nature in January 1939.
- Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, 1924.
- Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1925.
- Ellen Richards Award, 1928.
- External member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1945.
- Woman of the Year by the National Press Club, 1946.
- Vienna City Science Award, 1947.
- Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society (together with Hahn), 1949.
- Full member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1951.
- Otto Hahn Prize of the German Chemical Society, 1954.
- External member of the Royal Society, 1955.
- Order Pour le Mérite German, 1957.
- Wilhelm Exner Medal, 1960.
- Honorary External Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1960.
- Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, 1967.
- Enrico Fermi Award from the United States Atomic Energy Commission (along with Hahn and Strassmann), 1966.
- Element 109 of the periodic table was named "meitnerium" in 1997 in honor of Lise Meitner..
He received honorary doctorates from different study centers around the world, including Smith College, the University of Rochester, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Stockholm..
Some institutions were named after him, such as the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin. Some recognitions were also named after her, such as the Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society and the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Prize..
Yet No Comments