Lise Meitner . Physical Austrian who had a leading role in nuclear research, especially in the discovery of fission of the nucleus .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Trajectory
- 2 Death
- 2 Discoveries
- 3 Awards
- 4 Source
- 5 External links
Biographical synthesis
Lise Meiner was born in 1878 in Vienna . Just when she reached university age, restrictions on women to access higher education were lifted in Austria . There she received her doctorate in 1906 (she was the second woman to do so at that university), and left to continue her studies in Berlin , where Max Planck taught . She was the first woman to become a physical teacher at a university institution in Germany . It happened in 1926 , at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
Trajectory
Lise Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for her colleague Otto Hahn to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Meitner is one of the examples of scientific achievements that has been overlooked by the Nobel committee because in 1944 , Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission and some historians who have documented the history of the discovery of fission Nuclear believe that Meitner should have been awarded the Nobel Prize with Hahn.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 , Meitner was director of the Institute of Chemistry . Even though she was protected by her Austrian nationality, all other Jewish scientists, including her nephew Otto Frisch, Fritz Haber , Leó Szilárd and many other personalities, were fired or forced to resign from their positions, their response was to say nothing and bury herself her work.
In 1938 , Meitner, with the help of the Dutch physicists Coster and Fokker, was lucky to escape to Holland . In Stockholm she held a position at the Manne Siegbahn laboratory, despite the difficulties caused by prejudice against women in science .
Meitner and Hahn met clandestinely in Copenhagen to plan new experiments. Meitner and Frisch were the first to articulate a theory of how the nucleus of an atom could be divided into smaller parts: the uranium nuclei had separated to form barium and krypton , accompanied by the expulsion of several neutrons and a large quantity of energy .
Meitner also realized that the famous equation, E = mc2, explains the origin of the enormous release of atomic energy seen in decay, by mass-energy conversion. In 1966 , Hahn, Fritz Strassmann and together with Meitner were awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize.
On a visit to the United States in 1946, he received the celebrity treatment from the American press. She was honored as “Woman of the Year” by the National Women’s Press Club (USA), and received the Max Planck Medal from the German Physical Society in 1949 . In 1992 , Element 109 was named ” Meitnerium ” (Mt) in his honor. In addition to the item named after her, there have been other mentions of popular culture : The high school holds an annual dance honoring Lise Meitner, it’s called Eureka, and it says it strives to follow her ideals. Like Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, she is regarded as a feminist icon for her efforts and achievements. As one can imagine, it is very difficult for socially conservative people to accommodate the success of a woman, the world of high-level science was very closed. In her day she was perhaps the only woman in a classroom of 100 men.
In her first job in Berlin (at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1907 ), she was forced to work in a carpentry workshop set up in the basement, as the supervising laboratory could not bear to see a woman at work every day alongside the men in the lab. On another occasion, the editors of an encyclopedia wished to consult Professor Meitner about an article on radioactivity. They were much less enthusiastic when Professor Meitner turned out to be a woman.
Death
Lise Meitner died in Cambridge , the 27 of October of 1968 , staying her discovery of nuclear fission point and its constant struggle to be recognized as a scientific and woman