Lise Meitner (; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who contributed to the discoveries of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on radioactivity, she discovered the radioactive isotope protactinium-231 in 1917. In 1938, Meitner and nephew-physicist Otto Robert Frisch discovered nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie". Completing her doctoral research in 1905, Meitner became the first woman from the University of Vienna and second in the world to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, Germany, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; she was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany.
Introduction
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner | Introduction
She was an Austrian-Swedish physicist. An Austrian-Swedish physicist An Austrian-Swedish physicist Shewas an Austrian-Swedish physicist who contributed to the discoveries of the element protactinium and nuclear fission.
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Though Jewish, her father was a confirmed freethinker, and she was brought up as such. As an adult, she converted to Christianity, following Lutheranism, and was baptised in 1908. Her sisters Gisela and Lola converted to Catholicism that same year.
Lise Meitner | Early years
With Giesel's help, she was able to produce a pure product that was strongly radioactive. By December 1917 she was able to isolate both the mother isotope and its actinium daughter product. She submitted their findings for publication in March 1918.
Lise Meitner | World War I and the discovery of protactinium
Meitner's earliest research began at age eight, when she kept a notebook of her records underneath her pillow. She was particularly drawn to mathematics and science, and first studied colours of an oil slick, thin films, and reflected light. Women were not allowed to attend public institutions of higher education in Vienna until 1897, and she completed her final year of school in 1892. Her education included bookkeeping, arithmetic, history, geography, science, French and gymnastics. The only career available to women was teaching, so she trained as a French teacher. Her sister Gisela passed the "Matura", and entered medical school in 1900.
Lise Meitner | Education
"I am of Jewish descent", she told Frida, "I am not Jewish by belief, know nothing of the history of Judaism, and do not feel closer to Jews than to other people." On 25 January 1946, Meitner arrived in New York, where she was greeted by her sisters Lola and Frida, and by Frisch, who had made the two-day train trip from Los Alamos. Lola's husband Rudolf Allers arranged a visiting professorship for Meitner at the Catholic University of America. Meitner lectured at Princeton University, Harvard University and Columbia University, and discussed physics with Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, Tsung-Dao Lee, Yang Chen-Ning and Isidor Isaac Rabi.
Lise Meitner | Later life
Lise Meitner (; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who contributed to the discoveries of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on radioactivity, she discovered the radioactive isotope protactinium-231 in 1917. In 1938, Meitner and nephew-physicist Otto Robert Frisch discovered nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie". Completing her doctoral research in 1905, Meitner became the first woman from the University of Vienna and second in the world to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, Germany, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; she was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany.
Lise Meitner | Introduction
Meitner was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie". On her visit to the US in 1946, she received the honour "Woman of the Year" from the National Press Club and had dinner with the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, at the Women's National Press Club. She received the Leibniz Medal from the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1924, the Lieben Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1925, the Ellen Richards Prize in 1928, the City of Vienna Prize for science in 1947, Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society jointly with Hahn in 1949, the inaugural Otto Hahn Prize of the German Chemical Society in 1954, the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1960, and in 1967, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
This principle led to the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II, and the subsequently other nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Lise Meitner | Introduction
She could not leave for Denmark, Switzerland or any other country. Bohr came to Berlin in June, and was gravely concerned. When he returned to Copenhagen, he began looking for a position for Meitner in Scandinavia. He also asked Hans Kramers to see if anything was available in the Netherlands. Kramers contacted Costner, who in turn notified Adriaan Fokker. Coster and Fokker attempted to secure a position for Meitner at the University of Groningen. They found that the Rockefeller Foundation would not support refugee scientists, and that the International Federation of University Women had been flooded with applications for support from Austria.
Lise Meitner | Escape from Germany
The President of Germany, Theodor Heuss, awarded her the highest German order for scientists, the peace class of the Pour le Mérite in 1957, the same year as Hahn. Meitner became a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1945, and a full member in 1951, permitting her to participate in the Nobel Prize process. Four years later she was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. She was also elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960. She received honorary doctorates from Adelphi College, the University of Rochester, Rutgers University and Smith College in the United States, and from the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
Anxious to finish up before the Christmas break, Hahn and Strassmann submitted their findings to "Naturwissenschaften" on 22 December without waiting for Meitner to reply. Hahn concluded the paper with: "As chemists... we should substitute the symbols Ba, La, Ce for Ra, Ac, Th. As 'nuclear chemists' fairly close to physics we cannot yet bring ourselves to take this step which contradicts all previous experience in physics." Frisch normally celebrated Christmas with Meitner in Berlin, but in 1938 she accepted an invitation from Eva von Bahr to spend it with her family at Kungälv, and Meitner asked Frisch to join her there.
Lise Meitner | Nuclear fission
She became the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics, after Elsa Neumann who received the degree from the University of Berlin in 1899. Her thesis was published as "Wärmeleitung in inhomogenen Körpern" (""Thermal Conduction in Inhomogeneous Bodies"") on 22 February 1906.
Lise Meitner | Education
As a result, he could neither work in the chemical industry nor receive his habilitation. Meitner persuaded Hahn to hire him as an assistant. Soon he would be credited as a third collaborator on the papers they produced, and would sometimes even be listed first. Between 1933 and 1935, Meitner published exclusively in "Naturwissenschaften", as its editor Arnold Berliner was Jewish, and continued to accept submissions from Jewish scientists. This generated a boycott of the publication, and in August 1935 publisher Springer-Verlag fired Berliner.
Lise Meitner | National socialism
She was born Elise Meitner on 7 November 1878 into a Jewish upper-middle-class family at the family home in 27 Kaiser Josefstrasse in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, the third of eight children of Hedwig and Philipp Meitner. The birth register of Vienna's Jewish community lists her as being born on 17 November 1878, but all other documents list her date of birth as 7 November, which is what she used. She shortened her name from Elise to Lise. Her father was one of the first Jewish lawyers admitted to practice in Austria. She had two older siblings, Gisela and Auguste (Gusti), and five younger: Moriz (Fritz), Carola (Lola), Frida and Walter; all eight, including the five girls, ultimately pursued an advanced education.
Lise Meitner | Early years
In Sweden, Meitner continued her research as best she could. She measured the neutron cross sections of thorium, lead and uranium using dysprosium as a neutron detector, an assay technique pioneered by George de Hevesy and Hilde Levi. She was able to arrange for Hedwig Kohn, who faced deportation Poland, to come Sweden, and eventually to emigrate to the United States, travelling via the Soviet Union. She was unsuccessful in bringing Stefen Meyer out, but he managed to survive the war. She declined an offer to join Frisch on the British mission to the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, declaring "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" She later said that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had come as a surprise to her, and that she was "sorry that the bomb had to be invented".
Lise Meitner | Later life
Coster also spoke to the head of the border guards, who assured him that Meitner would be admitted. A friend of Coster, E. H. Ebels, was a local politician from the border area, and he spoke directly to the guards on the border.
Lise Meitner | Escape from Germany
Encouraged and backed by her father's financial support, Meitner went to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in the Dahlem district of Berlin, where the renowned physicist Max Planck taught. Planck invited her to his home, and allowed her to attend his lectures, which was an unusual gesture by Planck, who was on the record as being opposing women being admitted to universities in general, but was willing to admit that there was the occasional exception; apparently he recognised Meitner as one of the exceptions. She became friends with Planck's twin daughters Emma and Grete, who shared her love of music. Attending Planck's lectures did not take up all her time, and Meitner approached Heinrich Rubens, the head of the experimental physics institute, about doing some research.
Lise Meitner | Friedrich Wilhelm University
Meitner found that Siegbahn did not want her. At the time the offer to come to Sweden had been extended, he had said that he had no money, and could only offer Meitner a place to work. Eva von Bahr had then written to Carl Wilhelm Oseen, who had provided money from the Nobel Foundation. This left her with laboratory space, but now she had to perform herself work that for the previous twenty years she had been able to delegate to her laboratory technicians. Ruth Lewin Sime wrote that: On 14 January 1939, Meitner learned that her brother-in-law Jutz had been released from Dachau and he and her sister Gusti were permitted to emigrate to Sweden.
Lise Meitner | Later life
Her nominators included Arthur Compton, Dirk Coster, Kasimir Fajans, James Franck, Otto Hahn, Oscar Klein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck and Max Born. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962. Max Perutz, the 1962 Nobel prizewinner in chemistry, reached a similar conclusion: "Having been locked up in the Nobel Committee's files these fifty years, the documents leading to this unjust award now reveal that the protracted deliberations by the Nobel jury were hampered by lack of appreciation both of the joint work that had preceded the discovery and of Meitner's written and verbal contributions after her flight from Berlin."
Lise Meitner | Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
These included Arnold Flammersfeld, Kan-Chang Wang and Nikolaus Riehl. In 1926, she became an "außerordentlicher Professor" (extraordinary professor), the first woman university physics professor in Germany. Her physics section became larger, and she acquired a permanent assistant. Scientists from Germany and around the world came to the KWI for Chemistry to conduct research under her supervision. In 1930, Meitner taught a seminar on "Questions of Atomic Physics and Atomic Chemistry" with Leó Szilárd. Meitner had a Wilson cloud chamber constructed at the KWI for Chemistry, the first one in Berlin, and with her student Kurt Freitag studied the tracks of alpha particles that did not collide with a nucleus.
Lise Meitner | Beta radiation
She lost these positions in the 1930s because of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany, and in 1938 she fled to Sweden, where she lived for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen. In mid-1938, Meitner with chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute found that bombarding thorium with neutrons produced different isotopes. Hahn and Strassmann later in the year showed that isotopes of barium could be formed by bombardment of uranium. In late December, Meitner and Frisch worked out the phenomenon of such splitting process. In their report in February issue of "Nature" in 1939, they gave the name "fission".
Lise Meitner | Introduction
Adolf Hitler was sworn in as the Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, as his National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was now the largest party in the "Reichstag (Weimar Republic)". The 7 April 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removed Jewish people from the civil service, which included academia. Meitner never tried to conceal her Jewish descent, but initially was exempt from its impact on multiple grounds: she had been employed before 1914, had served in the military during the World War, was an Austrian rather than a German citizen, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was a government-industry partnership.
Lise Meitner | National socialism
Since 2008 the Austrian Physical Society together with the German Physical Society organize the Lise-Meitner-Lectures, a series of annual public talks given by distinguished female physicists, and since 2015 the AlbaNova University Centre in Stockholm has an annual Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture. In 2016, the Institute of Physics in the UK established the Meitner Medal for public engagement within physics. In 2017, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy in the United States named a major nuclear energy research program after her.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
Women were granted the right of habilitation in Prussia in 1920, and in 1922 Meitner was granted her habilitation and became a "Privatdozentin". She was the first woman to receive her habilitation in physics in Prussia, and only the second in Germany after Hedwig Kohn. Since Meitner had already published over 40 papers, she was not required to submit a thesis, but Max von Laue recommended that the requirement for an inaugural lecture not be waived, since he was interested in what she had to say. She therefore gave an inaugural lecture on "Problems of Cosmic Physics". From 1923 to 1933, she taught a colloquium or tutorial at Friedrich Wilhelm University each semester, and supervised doctoral students at the KWI for Chemistry.
Lise Meitner | Beta radiation
Glenn Seaborg, the discoverer of plutonium, presented it to her in the home of Max Perutz in Cambridge on 23 October 1966. After her death in 1968, Meitner received many naming honours. In 1997, the element 109 was named meitnerium. She is the first and so far the only non-mythological woman thus exclusively honoured (since Curium was named after both Marie and Pierre Curie). Additional naming honours are the Hahn–Meitner-Institut in Berlin, craters on the Moon, and Venus, and the main-belt asteroid 6999 Meitner. In 2000, the European Physical Society established the biannual "Lise Meitner Prize" for excellent research in nuclear science.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
Fackenheim's affirmation of his Jewish heritage, although embraced by many other Holocaust survivors, was by no means universal. Physicist Lise Meitner had been born and brought up Jewish. She rejected newspaper attempts to characterize her as a Jew following the bombing of Hiroshima when the press learned that she had been the first scientist to recognize nuclear fission. Decades before Hitler rose to power she had become a Lutheran. Although the Nazis stole her savings and ruined her career she refused to work on the bomb or let Hitler define her identity.
Emil Fackenheim | Conversion to other religions
After the war Meitner acknowledged her own moral failing in staying in Germany from 1933 to 1938. She wrote: "It was not only stupid but very wrong that I did not leave at once." She not only regretted her inaction during this period, she was also bitterly critical of Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg, and other German scientists. In a June 1945 letter addressed to Hahn, but that he never received, she wrote: In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, Meitner found that she had become a celebrity. She had a radio interview with Eleanor Roosevelt, and a few days later another one with a radio station in New York, during which heard her sister Frida's voice for the first time in years.
Lise Meitner | Later life
Jutz's boss, Gottfried Bermann had escaped to Sweden, and offered Jutz his old job back at the publishing firm if he was able to come. Niels Bohr interceded with a Swedish official, Justitieråd Alexandersson, who said that Jutz would receive a labour permit on arrival in Sweden. He worked there until he was pensioned off in 1948, and then moved to Cambridge to join Otto Robert Frisch. Her sister Gisela and brother-in-law Karl Lion moved to England, Meitner also considered moving to Britain. She visited Cambridge in July 1939, and accepted an offer from William Lawrence Bragg and John Cockcroft of a position at the Cavendish Laboratory on a three-year contract with Girton College, Cambridge, but the Second World War broke out in September 1939 before she could make the move.
Lise Meitner | Later life
If she wanted to go to the toilet, she had to use one at the restaurant down the street. The following year, women were admitted to Prussian universities, and Fischer lifted the restrictions, and had women's toilets installed in the building. Not all the chemists were happy about this. The Institute of Physics was more accepting, and she became friends with the physicists there, including , James Franck, Gustav Hertz, Robert Pohl, Max Planck, and Wilhelm Westphal.
Lise Meitner | Friedrich Wilhelm University
She went down to Durham, North Carolina and saw Hertha Spooner and Hedwing Kohn, and spent an evening in Washington, DC, with James Chadwick, who was now the head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project. She also met the project's director, Major General Leslie Groves. She spoke at Smith College, and went to Chicago, where she met Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf and Leo Szilard. On 8 July, Meitner boarded the for England, where she met with Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Max Born. There were belated celebrations for the 300th birthday of Isaac Newton, but the only German invited to attend was Max Planck.
Lise Meitner | Later life
However, she was dismissed from her adjunct professorship on 6 September on the grounds that World War I service was not at the front, and she had not completed her habilitation until 1922. This had no effect on her salary or work at the KWI for Chemistry. Carl Bosch, the director of IG Farben, a major sponsor of the KWI for Chemistry, assured Meitner that her position there was safe. Although Hahn and Meitner remained in charge, their assistants, Otto Erbacher and Kurt Philipp respectively, who were both NSDAP members, were given increasing influence over the day-to-day running of the institute.
Lise Meitner | National socialism
Rubens said that he would be happy for her to work in his laboratory. He also added that Otto Hahn at the chemistry institute was looking for a physicist to collaborate with. A few minutes later she was introduced to Hahn. He had studied radioactive substances under Sir William Ramsay, and in Montreal under Rutherford, and was already credited with the discovery of what were then thought to be several new radioactive elements. (In fact, they were isotopes of known elements, but the concept of an isotope, along with the term, was only propounded by Frederick Soddy in 1913.) Hahn was the same age as herself, and she noted his informal and approachable manner.
Lise Meitner | Friedrich Wilhelm University
In 1921, Meitner accepted an invitation from Manne Siegbahn to come to Sweden and give a series of lectures on radioactivity as a visiting professor at Lund University. She found that very little research had been done on radioactivity in Sweden, but she was eager to learn about X-ray spectroscopy, which was Siegbahn's specialty. At his laboratory, she met a Dutch doctoral candidate, Dirk Coster, who was studying X-ray spectroscopy, and his wife Miep, who was working on her doctorate in Indonesian language and culture. Armed with this knowledge, Meitner took a fresh look at the beta-ray spectra when she returned to Berlin.
Lise Meitner | Beta radiation
But the isotope they had found was a beta emitter, and therefore could not be the mother isotope of actinium. This had to be another isotope of the same element. In 1914 Hahn and Meitner had developed a new technique for separating the tantalum group from pitchblende, which they hoped would speed the isolation of the new isotope. But when Meitner resumed work in 1917, not only Hahn but most of the students, laboratory assistants and technicians had been called up, so Meitner had to do everything herself. In February, Meitner extracted 2 grams of silicon dioxide () from 21 grams of pitchblende.
Lise Meitner | World War I and the discovery of protactinium
The Lise Meitner Lectures (LML) are a series of public lectures in honour of Lise Meitner. The lectures are organized jointly by the German Physical Society and the Austrian Physical Society, with the intention to showcase outstanding female scientists in physics or related fields. The annual lecture series was launched in 2008, when Lise Meitner's birthday celebrated its 130th anniversary. In October 2008, the Lise Meitner Lecture was held in Vienna and Berlin with an accompanying exhibition. The annual lecture series not only aims at increasing the visibility of successful female researchers, but also at encouraging girls and young women towards careers in physics.
Lise-Meitner-Lectures | Introduction
Meitner studied at the Vienna Polytecnic, and William Steinitz was a fellow student.
Philipp Meitner | Introduction
In 1899, Meitner began taking private lessons with two other young women, cramming the missing eight years of secondary education into just two. Physics was taught by Arthur Szarvasy. In July 1901 the girls sat an external examination at the Akademisches Gymnasium. Only four out of fourteen girls passed, including Meitner and Henriette Boltzmann, the daughter of physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. Meitner entered the University of Vienna in October 1901. She was particularly inspired by Boltzmann, and was said to often speak with contagious enthusiasm of his lectures. Her dissertation was supervised by Franz Exner and Hans Benndorf. Her thesis titled "Prüfung einer Formel Maxwells" (""Examination of Maxwell's Formula"") was submitted on 28 November 1905, evaluated by Exner and Boltzmann, and approved on 28 November 1905.
Lise Meitner | Education
On 27 June, Meitner received an offer of a one-year position at Manne Siegbahn's new in Stockholm, then under construction, which would be devoted to nuclear physics, and she decided to accept it. But on 4 July she learned that academics would no longer be granted permission to travel abroad. Through Bohr in Copenhagen, Peter Debye communicated with Coster and Fokker, and they approached the Netherlands Ministry of Education with an appeal to allow Meitner to come to the Netherlands. As foreigners were not allowed to work for pay, an appointment as a non-salaried "privaat-docente" was required. Wander Johannes de Haas and Anton Eduard van Arkel arranged for one at Leiden University.
Lise Meitner | Escape from Germany
They identified ten different half lives, with varying degrees of certainty. To account for them, Meitner had to hypothesise a new class of reaction and the alpha decay of uranium, neither of which had ever been reported before, and for which physical evidence was lacking. Hahn and Strassmann refined their chemical procedures, while Meitner devised new experiments to shine more light on the reaction processes.
Lise Meitner | Transmutation
Over Christmas 1938, Meitner considered the problem of the uranium nucleus, which she reasoned, given its relative size, must be quite unstable. She decided to model the nucleus as a drop of water, ready to divide with the impact of a single neutron. She realised the nucleus had split in half, and both Fermi and Hahn had witnessed what is now known as nuclear fission. However, in doing the calculations for such an event, Meitner was unable to make the equations balance. She calculated that the products of the fission reaction were lighter than the initial uranium, by about one fifth of a proton.
Chemistry: A Volatile History | Lise Meitner explains Fermi's work
In July 1914—shortly before the outbreak of World War I in August—Hahn was called to active duty with the army in a "Landwehr" regiment. Meitner undertook X-ray technician training, and a course on anatomy at the city hospital in Lichterfelde. Meanwhile, she completed both the work on the beta ray spectrum that she had begun before the war with Hahn and Baeyer, and her own study of the uranium decay chain. In July 1915, she returned to Vienna, where she joined the Austrian Army as an X-ray nurse-technician. Her unit was soon deployed to the Eastern front in Poland, and she also served on the Italian front for a while before being discharged in September 1916.
Lise Meitner | World War I and the discovery of protactinium
With the "Anschluss", Germany's unification with Austria on 12 March 1938, Meitner lost her Austrian citizenship. Niels Bohr extended an offer to lecture in Copenhagen, and Paul Scherrer invited her to attend a congress in Switzerland, with all expenses paid. Carl Bosch still said that she could remain at the KWI for Chemistry, but by May she was aware that the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture was looking into her case. On 9 May she decided to accept Bohr's invitation to go to Copenhagen, where Frisch worked, but when she went to the Danish consulate to get a travel visa, she was told that Denmark no longer recognised her Austrian passport as valid.
Lise Meitner | Escape from Germany
Despite the many honours that Meitner received in her lifetime, she did not receive the Nobel Prize while it was awarded to Otto Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission. On 15 November 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei". Meitner was the one who told Hahn and Strassman to test their radium in more detail and it was she who told Hahn that it was possible for the nucleus of uranium to disintegrate. Without these contributions of Meitner, Hahn would not have found that the uranium nucleus can split in half.
Lise Meitner | Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
In 1945 the Nobel Committee for Chemistry in Sweden that selected the Nobel Prize in Chemistry decided to award that prize solely to Hahn. In the 1990s, the long-sealed records of the Nobel Committee's proceedings became public, and the comprehensive biography of Meitner published in 1996 by Ruth Lewin Sime took advantage of this unsealing to reconsider Meitner's exclusion. In a 1997 article in the American Physical Society journal "Physics Today", Sime and her colleagues Elisabeth Crawford and Mark Walker wrote: The five-member physics committee included Manne Siegbahn, his former student Erik Hulthén, the professor of experimental physics at Uppsala University, and Axel Lindh, who eventually succeeded Hulthén.
Lise Meitner | Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
As such, she marked his students' papers. It was her first paid position. Assistant was the lowest rung on the academic ladder, and Meitner was the first female scientific assistant in Prussia. Proud officials presented Meitner to Kaiser Wilhelm II at the official opening of the KWI for Chemistry on 23 October 1912. The following year she became a "Mitglied" (associate), the same rank as Hahn (although her salary was still less), and the radioactivity section became the Hahn-Meitner Laboratory. Meitner celebrated with a dinner party at the Hotel Adlon. Hahn and Meitner's salaries would soon be dwarfed by royalties from mesothorium (radium-228 – "German radium") produced for medical purposes, for which Hahn received 66,000 marks in 1914, of which he gave ten per cent to Meitner.
Lise Meitner | Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry
Lise Girardin (15 February 1921 – 16 October 2010) was a Swiss politician. A member of the Free Democratic Party, she was the woman to be elected as mayor of Geneva and the first woman elected to the Council of States.
Lise Girardin | Introduction
The Lise Meitner Prize for nuclear physics, established in 2000, is awarded every two years by the European Physical Society for outstanding work in the fields of experimental, theoretical or applied nuclear science. It is named after Lise Meitner to honour her fundamental contributions to nuclear physics and her courageous and exemplary life.
Lise Meitner Prize | Introduction
Lotte and Max knew and socialized with the physicist Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn from the 1920s onwards. Lotte also documented some of these conversations between Lise and Max.
Lotte Pusch | Personal
Strongly radioactive substances were stored in the old wood shop, and later in a purpose-built radium house on the institute grounds.
Lise Meitner | Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry
In 2006 the "Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award" was established by the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden; it is awarded annually to a scientist who has made a breakthrough in physics. In October 2010, the building at the Free University of Berlin that had once housed the KWI for Chemistry, and was known as the Otto Hahn Building since 1956, was renamed the Hahn-Meitner Building, and in July 2014 a statue of Meitner was unveiled in the garden of the Humboldt University of Berlin next to similar statues of Hermann von Helmholtz and Max Planck. Schools and streets were named after her in many cities in Austria and Germany, and a short residential street in Bramley, her resting place, is named Meitner Close.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
But I believe that Frisch and I contributed something not insignificant to the clarification of the process of uranium fission—how it originates and that it produces so much energy and that was something very remote to Hahn." Hahn's receipt of a Nobel Prize was long expected. Both he and Meitner had been nominated for both the chemistry and the physics prizes several times even before the discovery of nuclear fission. According to the Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 29 times for Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1965.
Lise Meitner | Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
Ilse Meudtner (1 November 1912 – 18 July 1990) was a German diver. She competed at the 1928 Summer Olympics in the 3 m springboard and finished fourth. Between 1934 and 1940 Meudtner was a solo dancer at the Berlin State Opera, and during World War II she performed abroad. After the war she married a Dutch man and became a Dutch citizen. An injury in 1955 ended her dancing career. Since 1964 she worked as a journalist in Madrid.
Ilse Meudtner | Introduction
In 1938, she returned to the United States and appeared in concert with the Kansas City Philharmonic. She continued her education at the Juilliard School, graduating in May 1945. In the same year, she received the Leventritt Award. Meiszner performed with most of major orchestras in the United States and Europe, including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.
Louise Meiszner | Introduction
The export of uranium from Austria was forbidden due to wartime restrictions, but Meyer was able to offer her a kilogram of uranium residue, pitchblende from which the uranium had been removed, which was actually better for her purpose. The indicator tests showed that the alpha activity was not due to these substances. All that now remained was to find evidence of actinium. For this more pitchblende was required, and this time Meyer was unable to assist, as the export was now prohibited. Meitner managed to obtain 100 g of "double residue"—pitchblende without uranium or radium—from Friedrich Oskar Giesel and began tests with 43 grams of it, but its composition was different, and at first her tests did not work.
Lise Meitner | World War I and the discovery of protactinium
Lise Berthaud (born 1982) is a French violist.
Lise Berthaud | Introduction
Meitner is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Meitner (surname) | Introduction
Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture is a colloquium-style distinguished lecture that takes places at AlbaNova University Center in Stockholm on annual basis. The lecture commemorates Lise Meitner who spent substantial part of her career in Stockholm. AlbaNova University Center hosts physics departments of the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Nordita. The Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture is sponsored by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Committee for Physics.
Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture | Introduction
For her friends in Sweden, Siegbahn's obstruction of Meitner's Nobel Prize was the final straw, and they resolved to get her a better position. In 1947, Meitner moved to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where established a new facility for atomic research. There had been scant nuclear physics research in Sweden, which was blamed on Siegbahn's lack of support for Meitner's work, and now such knowledge seemed vital for Sweden's future. At the KTH, Meitner had three rooms, two assistants, and access to technicians, with the amiable Sigvard Eklund occupying the room next door. The intention was that Meitner would have the salary and title of a "research professor"—one without teaching duties.
Lise Meitner | Later life
Lise Thiry (born 1921) is a Belgian scientist and politician. She has been voted one of the top 100 Belgians on a television show on the Belgian French-speaking public channel RTBF.
Lise Thiry | Introduction
Born in Detroit, Meiser studied at the Liggett School, Kox Schule in Dresden, Germany, and the Ecole de la Cour de St. Pierre in Geneva, Switzerland before eventually attending Vassar College.
Edith Meiser | Early life
Meike Ziervogel (born 1967, Germany) is a novelist and publisher.
Meike Ziervogel | Introduction
In September 1966 the United States Atomic Energy Commission jointly awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize to Hahn, Strassmann and Meitner for their discovery of fission. The ceremony was held in the Hofburg palace in Vienna. It was the first time that this prize had been awarded to non-Americans, and the first time it was presented to a woman. Meitner's diploma bore the words: "For pioneering research in the naturally occurring radioactivities and extensive experimental studies leading to the discovery of fission". Hahn's diploma was slightly different: "For pioneering research in the naturally occurring radioactivities and extensive experimental studies culminating in the discovery of fission." Hahn and Strassmann were present, but Meitner was too ill to attend, so Frisch accepted the award on her behalf.
Lise Meitner | Awards and honours
Her English titles so far:
Lise Lyng Falkenberg | Introduction
In 1912, Hahn and Meitner moved to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry. Hahn accepted an offer from Fischer to become a junior assistant in charge of its radiochemistry section, the first laboratory of its kind in Germany. The job came with the title of "professor" and a salary of 5,000 marks per annum. Meitner worked without salary as a "guest" in Hahn's section. Later that year, perhaps fearing that Meitner was in financial difficulties and might return to Vienna, since her father had died in 1910, Planck appointed her his assistant as the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University.
Lise Meitner | Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry
At the reception for this award, she sat next to the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. But Meitner did not enjoy public speaking, especially in English, nor did she relish the role of a celebrity, and she declined the offer of a visiting professorship at Wellesley College. In 1966, the United States Atomic Energy Commission jointly awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize to Hahn, Strassmann and Meitner for their discovery of fission. The ceremony was held in the Hofburg palace in Vienna. It was the first time that the Enrico Fermi Prize had been awarded to non-Americans, and the first time it was presented to a woman.
Discovery of nuclear fission | In history and memory
She was also a ballerina, and appeared under her husband's name, Alexis Dupont.
Lise Noblet | Introduction
Lina Mittner (10 February 1919 – 25 February 2013) was a Swiss alpine skier who competed in the 1948 Winter Olympics.
Lina Mittner | Introduction
Meir David Loewenstein (, also spelt Levenstein or Levinstein; 1 June 1904 – 15 August 1995) was an Israeli politician and one of the signatories of the Israeli declaration of independence.
Meir David Loewenstein | Introduction
She was a member of the American Mathematical Society, among other professional societies.
Marie Litzinger | Introduction
Maria Leitner (19 January 1892 - 14 March 1942) was a Hungarian writer and journalist in the German language. She is remembered as a pioneer of "undercover reporting".
Maria Leitner | Introduction
In 1914, Meitner received an attractive offer of an academic position in Prague. Planck made it clear to Fischer that he didn't want Meitner to leave, and Fischer arranged for her salary to be doubled to 3,000 marks. The move to new accommodation was fortuitous, as the wood shop had become thoroughly contaminated by radioactive liquids that had been spilt, and radioactive gases that had vented and the decayed and settled as radioactive dust, making sensitive measurements impossible. To ensure that their clean new laboratories stayed that way, Hahn and Meitner instituted strict procedures. Chemical and physical measurements were conducted in different rooms, people handling radioactive substances had to follow protocols that included not shaking hands, and rolls of toilet paper were hung next to every telephone and door handle.
Lise Meitner | Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry
Lisa Barbier Cristiani (December 24, 1827 – October 24, 1853), also known as Lise Cristiani or Elise Cristiani, was a French cellist and performer known for being one of the earliest recorded instances of a woman becoming a professional in the field.
Lisa Cristiani | Introduction
Liane Mozère (4 January 1939 - 17 October 2013) was a Chinese-French sociologist and feminist.
Liane Mozère | Introduction
It was known that some beta emission was primary, with electrons being ejected directly from the nucleus, and some was secondary, in which alpha particles from the nucleus knocked electrons out of orbit. Meitner was sceptical of Chadwick's claim that the spectral lines were entirely due to secondary electrons, while the primary ones formed a continuous spectrum. Using techniques developed by Jean Danysz, she examined the spectra of lead-210, radium-226 and thorium-238. Meitner discovered the cause of the emission of electrons from surfaces of atoms with "signature" energies, now known as the Auger effect. The effect is named for Pierre Victor Auger, who independently discovered it in 1923.
Lise Meitner | Beta radiation
The famous physicist Lise Meitner is buried in the burial ground next to the church, near the grave of her brother Walter.
St James' Church, Bramley | Churchyard
Lotte Meitner-Graf (1899-1973) was a noted Austrian black and white portrait photographer. Meitner-Graf moved to England with her family in 1937, opening her own studio at 23 Old Bond Street in London in 1953. Frisch, in his Times obituary, noted that there "can be few educated people who have not seen one of Lotte Meitner-Graf’s photographic portraits, either on a book jacket (for instance, Bertrand Russell’s autobiography, or Antony Hopkins’s Music all around me) or on a record sleeve or concert programme." She photographed Albert Schweitzer, musicians Marion Anderson, Klemperer and Menuhin; actors John Gielgud and Danny Kaye; and scientists Lord Blackett, William Lawrence Bragg, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Max Perutz.
Lotte Meitner-Graf | Introduction
Meitner returned to the KWI for Chemistry and her research in October. In January 1917, she was appointed the head of her own physics section. The Hahn-Meitner Laboratory was divided into separate Hahn and Meitner Laboratories, and her pay was increased to 4,000 marks. Hahn returned to Berlin on leave, and they discussed another loose end from their pre-war work: the search for the mother isotope of actinium. According to the radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy, this had to be an isotope of the undiscovered element 91 on the periodic table that lay between thorium and uranium. Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring discovered this element in 1913, and named it "brevium" after its short half life.
Lise Meitner | World War I and the discovery of protactinium
The Meitner family, ancestors of Austrian nuclear physicist Lise Meitner (1878–1968), settled in Majetín. Under the rule of Emperor Joseph II in the late 18th century, they adopted the surname "Meietheiner", derived from their place of origin.
Majetín | Notable people
All three were part of the Siegbahn school of x-ray spectroscopy. The poor relationship between Siegbahn and Meitner was a factor here, as was the bias towards experimental rather than theoretical physics. In his report on the work of Meitner and Frisch, Hulthén relied on pre-war papers. He did not think that their work was groundbreaking, and argued that the prize for physics was given for experimental rather than theoretical work, which had not been the case for many years. At the time Meitner herself wrote in a letter, "Surely Hahn fully deserved the Nobel Prize for chemistry. There is really no doubt about it.
Lise Meitner | Nobel Prize for nuclear fission
She died in 1965 in the capital city of Tallinn.
Lydia Mei | Introduction
She developed leukemia later in life due to inhaling an exploded capsule from her lab. Lastly, Kean mentions the injustice done to Lise Meitner and her tremendous work with Otto Hahn. They both found element 91 known as brevium, but then it was changed to protactinium. Owing to the fact that Lise was a woman and the advent of World War II, she was not awarded then or later. Otto Hahn received a Nobel Prize and did not mention her.
The Disappearing Spoon | Chapter 12. Political elements
Louise Meiszner (August 24, 1924 – June 30, 2008) was an American pianist and music educator. Her married name was Louise M. Nathanson. The daughter of Lujza Eberhardt, a concert pianist, and John Meiszner, a flautist, both immigrants from Hungary, she was born in St. Louis, Missouri. A child prodigy, she began playing the piano at the age of three and gave her first public concert at the age of five. In 1930, the family moved back to Hungary, where she attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music for eight years. At the age of thirteen, she was invited by Austrian composer Erich Kleiber to perform with his orchestra as a soloist.
Louise Meiszner | Introduction
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (; born October 5, 1947, in Beijing, China) is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Awards, her work is often associated with the Language School, the poetry of the New York School, phenomenology, and visual art. She is married to the painter Richard Tuttle, with whom she has frequently collaborated.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | Introduction
Lise Blouin (born September 11, 1944) is a Quebec educator and novelist.
Lise Blouin | Introduction
Erika Meitner (born 1975 in New York) is an American poet.
Erika Meitner | Introduction
Caren Lissner is an American novelist, essayist, and newspaper editor. Her published novels include "Carrie Pilby" (2003) and "Starting from Square Two" (2004).
Caren Lissner | Introduction
Lise Delamare (9 April 1913 – 25 July 2006) was a French stage and film actress.
Lise Delamare | Introduction
Liliane Klein-Lieber (June 2, 1924 – July 8, 2020) was a French resistance member. She became in 1931 a member of the Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs israélites de France (EIF). During the Second World War, she was a social worker in the Grenoble region and was a member of the French resistance. She found hideouts and provided false papers. During this period, she used the name Lyne Leclerc.
Liliane Klein-Lieber | Introduction
Somehow, a small amount of mass had disappeared. Then slowly, the solution to this discrepancy occurred to Meitner – Einstein and "E = mc" – the missing mass had been converted to energy.
Chemistry: A Volatile History | Lise Meitner explains Fermi's work
Berthe Meijer (21 April 1938 – 10 July 2012) was a Holocaust survivor and author.
Berthe Meijer | Introduction
Mordechai Shatner (, 1904 – 1964) was a Zionist activist and a signatory of the Israeli declaration of independence.
Mordechai Shatner | Introduction
Käthe Lettner (born 13 December 1906, date of death unknown) was an Austrian alpine skier. She competed in the women's combined event at the 1936 Winter Olympics.
Käthe Lettner | Introduction
Like Meitner, Hahn was unpaid, and lived off an allowance from his father, although somewhat larger than hers. He completed his habilitation in the spring of 1907, and became a "Privatdozent". Most of the organic chemists at the chemistry institute did not regarded Hahn's work—detecting minute traces of isotopes too small to see, weigh or smell through their radioactivity—as real chemistry. One department head remarked that "it is incredible what one gets to be a "Privatdozent" these days!" The arrangement was difficult for Meitner at first. Women were not yet admitted to universities in Prussia. Meitner was allowed to work in the wood shop, which had its own external entrance, but could not set foot in the rest of the institute, including Hahn's laboratory space upstairs.
Lise Meitner | Friedrich Wilhelm University
All columns published in the "Journal de Montréal" and the "Journal de Québec" are available on the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) website: https://web.archive.org/web/20100327200755/http://www.iedm.org/main/edit_mon_fr.php Partial list of the studies Nathalie Elgrably-Lévy realized for the MEI:
Nathalie Elgrably-Lévy | Articles
Lise Mayer (born 29 November 1957) is an American-born English television and film writer, best known as, alongside Rik Mayall and Ben Elton, a creator and co-writer of the BBC comedy series "The Young Ones".
Lise Mayer | Introduction
Friedrich Leitner (January 26, 1874 – July 3, 1945) was a German economist. He taught at Humbold University Berlin.
Friedrich Leitner | Introduction
Inna Ilyinichna Meiman-Kitrossky (, 16 October 1932, Moscow – 9 February 1987, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.) was a refusenik, a member of a group of refuseniks-cancer patients, and an author of textbooks for the English language.
Inna Meiman-Kitrossky | Introduction
Johanna Mikl-Leitner (born ) is an Austrian politician (ÖVP) and since 19 April 2017 the governor of Lower Austria.
Johanna Mikl-Leitner | Introduction
Lise Gervais (1933–1998) was a Canadian abstract painter and sculptor. She was president of the "Conseil des Artistes Peintres du Quebec" in 1983 and 1984.
Lise Gervais | Introduction
Meier died in Lucerne on 4 November 2006, a decade after being diagnosed with cancer. She continued practicing law until her death. Her political achievements earned her the nicknames of the "Grand Old Lady" of Swiss politics and the "old warhorse of Lucerne". She was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Fribourg in 1991 and the University of Lucerne in 1994. As an advocate of women's participation in politics, she once declared that "Frauen gehören ins Haus, ins Bundeshaus!" ().
Josi Meier | Death and legacy
Elisabeth Cathrine "Lise" Welhaven (6 March 1815 – 26 July 1901) was a Norwegian writer.
Elisabeth Welhaven | Introduction