Lise Meitner (November 7, 1878 – October 27, 1968)

Lise Meitner was a physicist who studied radioactivity and nuclear physics and was part of the scientific team that discovered nuclear fission. Her colleague, Otto Hahn was awarded a Nobel Prize for this work. Her work is often referred to as one of the most glaring examples of scientific work that was overlooked by the Nobel committee. Lise Meitner has been called the "mother of the atomic bomb" even though she had no work in it; however, her work on the fission process laid the groundwork for its development.

Lise Meitner was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria on November 7, 1878. She was the third of eight children. Lise entered the University of Vienna in 1901 and studied under Ludwig Boltzmann. Meitner wrote a thesis on the experimental topic of the conduction of heat in inhomogeneous solids, a study that was also being performed by J.C. Maxwell. After becoming the second woman to receive her doctorate from the University of Vienna, she moved to Berlin in 1907 and studied under the notable physicist Max Planck.

Eventually, Meitner joined chemist Otto Hahn to study the physics and chemistry of radioactivity. Lise headed the Physics department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry and the pair worked together for 30 years in the new field of nuclear physics. The Meitner-Hahn team researched the possibility of creating laboratory elements heavier than Uranium. It was a race to the Nobel Prize for the team; other teams that were also researching and hoping for the Nobel honor include Ernest Rutherford, Irene Joliot-Curie, and Enrico Fermi. Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn were joined by Fritz Strassman to further Fermi's research in transuranic elements.

After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Meitner was forced to flee Berlin. Lise accepted a post at Manne Siegbahn's lab where she faced great prejudice from Siegbahn but developed a professional relationship with Niels Bohr. She remained in contact with Hahn and planned a round of experiments that would provide evidence for nuclear fission. The experiments were performed in Hahn's lab in Berlin and the chemical findings were published in January of 1939. In February 1939, Lise and her nephew Otto Frisch published the physical explanation and named the process 'nuclear fission'. These discoveries would prompt Albert Einstein to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him that uses of nuclear fission could be used for the formation of an atomic bomb. Einstein's warning formed the basis of the Manhattan Project.

Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his research on nuclear fission. He downplayed Lise's contribution to the research after she left Germany, causing her to be ignored. This is often referred to as the Nobel "mistake" and was never acknowledged despite Bohr's effort to set the record straight. In 1966 Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann were awarded the Enrico Fermi Award for their lifetimes of achievement – partially rectifying her omission by the Nobel committee.

Lise Meitner was a shy and unassuming woman whom Einstein called "the German Madame Curie". This was indeed an honor for Lise; both to be praised by Einstein and to be compared to her idol, Madame Curie. In 1992, the 109^th element was named in her honor, 'meitnerium'.

Resources:

http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/meitner.html

http://www.users.bigpond.com/Sinclair/fission/LiseMeitner.html

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Meitner.shtml