Profile
Settings
Refer your friends
Sign out
Lise Meitner was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, on November 7th, 1878. She was an Austrian-born scientist who shared the Enrico Fermi Prize (1966) with chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann for their collaborative research that found evidence of uranium fission.
Meitner received her PhD at the University of Vienna in 1906, and in 1907 she attended Max Planck’s lectures in Berlin, where she joined Hahn in radiation research. During their three-decade collaboration, she and Ahn were the first to isolate an isotope protactinium-231 (which they called), examined nuclear isomerism also beta decay, and investigated the products of uranium neutron bombardment (together with Strassmann) in the 1930s. She fled Nazi Germany mostly in the summers of 1938 because of being Jewish.
Early Years
Elise Meitner, the third of the eight children of Hedwig & Philipp Meitner, was born on November 7, 1878, into a middle-class Jewish family. Her date of birth is listed as 17 November 1878 in the Jewish community of Vienna’s birth registration, but all other papers state her birthdate as 7th of November, which she officially used. Her father was among the first Jewish attorneys in Austria to be admitted to practice. She had two elder siblings, Gisela and Auguste, and four younger siblings, Moriz, Carola, Frida, and Walter, all of whom pursued college.
Her father was a great believer in free thought, and she was raised accordingly. She became a Christian as an adult.
Lise Meitner discovered a nonradiative shift in 1923. Despite Meitner discovering the nonradiative shift, the effect was named after Pierre Victor Auger, a French physicist who found it two years later. The phenomenon is called the Auger effect.
Meitner was compelled to depart Germany after Germany conquered Austria in 1938. She worked her way at Manne Siegbahn’s institution in Stockholm, which had certain obstacles due to Siegbahn’s anti-women bias.
In November, Hahn & Meitner met in Copenhagen to discuss a fresh set of trials. Hahn’s laboratory in Germany conducted the tests that led to the discovery of nuclear fission, which was reported in January 1939. Meitner provided the scientific explanation for the findings in February 1939 and named the phenomenon after her nephew, scientist Otto Frisch as nuclear fission.
The discovery prompted other scientists to write President Franklin D. Roosevelt a written warning, resulting in the Manhattan Project.
Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
Despite the numerous awards throughout her lifetime, Meitner was not awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, which was given to Otto Hahn again for finding nuclear fission. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry 48 times but never won.
Meitner should’ve been the champion of the day, and the scientists & chemists should have published their findings together and waited for the world to congratulate them on discovering nuclear fission. But, regrettably, this was not the case.
On November 15, 1945, the Imperial Swedish Academy announced that Hahn had won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for “his finding of the disintegration of heavy nucleons.” Meitner was also the one who alerted Hahn and Strassmann that they needed to test their radium more thoroughly, and she was the one who warned Hahn that the nucleus of uranium might dissolve.
Without Meitner’s assistance, Hahn would not have discovered that the uranium nucleus may divide in two. Hahn received the Nobel for Chemistry in 1944 for his work on fission, but Meitner was overlooked because Hahn has minimised her participation since she left Germany.
The Nobel blunder, which was never admitted, was somewhat remedied in 1966 as Hahn, Meitner, & Strassman received the Enrico Fermi Award. During a visit to the United States in 1946, she was treated like a star by the American press, as somebody who had “left Germany with bombs in her handbag.”
In 1960, Meitner moved to Cambridge, England, where she died on October 27. In her honour, element 109, the universe’s heaviest known element, was names Meitnerium (Mt) in 1992. Lise Meitner is often regarded as the “most important woman physicist of the twentieth century.”
Conclusion
Lise Meitner (November 7, 1878, Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now that in Austria]—October 27, 1968, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Britain) was an Austrian-born scientist who got to share the Enrico Fermi Award (1966) with pharmacists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann for their collaborative research that led to the discovery of uranium.
Despite the numerous awards throughout her lifetime, Meitner was not awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, which was given to Otto Hahn again for finding nuclear fission. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry 48 times but never won.
