Lise Meitner

Biography

Elise "Lise" Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who made key contributions to understanding atomic structure and nuclear processes. Born in Vienna on November 7, 1878, she became the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1906. Her doctoral research was on heat conduction, but she later shifted her focus to radioactivity and nuclear physics, fields that were quickly developing in the early 20th century.

Meitner spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry with chemist Otto Hahn. Their collaboration began in 1907, lasting over thirty years, and led to groundbreaking research on radioactive elements and nuclear processes. She was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany, leading her own physics department at the institute. During this time, she discovered the element protactinium in 1918 and conducted extensive research on beta decay and nuclear structure.

The rise of Nazi Germany drastically changed Meitner's life and career. The anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped her of her positions, despite her previous conversion to Christianity. The 1938 Anschluss further endangered her by removing her Austrian citizenship. On July 13-14, 1938, she fled Germany with help from Dutch physicist Dirk Coster and settled in Stockholm, Sweden, where she continued her work at the Nobel Institute.

Meitner's most significant scientific contribution came when she theoretically explained experiments conducted by her former colleagues Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in late 1938. When Hahn shared their puzzling results showing barium formation from uranium bombardment, Meitner, working with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch during a Christmas walk in Sweden, offered the correct explanation. She realized the uranium nucleus was splitting into smaller parts, releasing large amounts of energy according to Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle. Their joint paper, published in Nature in February 1939, introduced the term "fission."

Despite her vital role in explaining nuclear fission, Meitner was excluded from the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was awarded only to Otto Hahn. This has been widely criticized by scientists and historians as a significant oversight likely reflecting the gender biases of the time. Meitner continued her research in Sweden until 1954, then moved to Britain to be closer to family. She received numerous honors throughout her career, including the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966, shared with Hahn and Strassmann. She died in Cambridge, England, on October 27, 1968, at the age of 89.