Elise "Lise" Meitner ( MYTE-ner; German: [ˈliːzə ˈmaɪtnɐ] ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian and Swedish nuclear physicist whose work was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission.
Elise "Lise" Meitner ( MYTE-ner; German: [ˈliːzəˈmaɪtnɐ] ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian and Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission.
Upon the completion of her doctoral research in 1906, Meitner achieved the distinction of being the second woman to obtain a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. A significant portion of her scientific career was dedicated to Berlin, where she served as a physics professor and department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Notably, she was the inaugural woman to attain the rank of full professor of physics in Germany. Her academic appointments were terminated in 1935 due to the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws enacted by Nazi Germany, and the 1938 Anschluss subsequently led to the revocation of her Austrian citizenship. Between July 13 and 14, 1938, she sought refuge in the Netherlands, aided by Dirk Coster. After residing in Stockholm for numerous years and acquiring Swedish citizenship in 1949, she eventually moved to Britain in the 1950s to join her family.
During mid-1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, chemists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, demonstrated the formation of barium isotopes through the neutron bombardment of uranium. Hahn subsequently apprised Meitner of these findings, and in late December, collaborating with her nephew, physicist Otto Robert Frisch, she elucidated the physical principles of this process by accurately interpreting Hahn and Strassmann's experimental data. On January 13, 1939, Frisch successfully replicated the phenomenon previously observed by Hahn and Strassmann. Their collaborative report, published in the February 1939 issue of Nature, formally designated this process as "fission". The groundbreaking discovery of nuclear fission subsequently facilitated the development of nuclear reactors and atomic bombs during World War II.
Meitner was not a recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission, an award bestowed solely upon her long-standing collaborator, Otto Hahn. Her omission from the award has been widely characterized as "unjust" by numerous scientists and journalists. Records from the Nobel Prize archive indicate that she received 19 nominations for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 30 nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1967. Notwithstanding her lack of a Nobel Prize, Meitner was extended an invitation to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962. She garnered numerous other accolades, notably the posthumous designation of element 109 as meitnerium in 1997. Albert Einstein lauded Meitner, referring to her as the "German Marie Curie".
Early Years
Elise Meitner was born in November 1878 into an upper-middle-class Jewish family, at the family residence located at 27 Kaiser Josefstraße in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district. She was the third of eight children born to chess master Philipp Meitner and his spouse, Hedwig. While the birth register of Vienna's Jewish community records her birth date as November 17, 1878, all other official documents, and her personal usage, indicate November 7 as her date of birth.
Her father was among the pioneering Jewish lawyers granted admission to practice in Austria. She had two elder siblings, Gisela and Auguste (Gusti), and four younger siblings: Moriz (Fritz), Carola (Lola), Frida, and Walter; all of whom eventually pursued higher education. Her father adhered to freethinking principles, and she was raised in accordance with these beliefs.
In adulthood, she converted to Christianity, embracing Lutheranism, and was baptized in 1908; concurrently, her sisters Gisela and Lola converted to Catholicism. Concurrently, she adopted the diminutive name "Lise".
Education
Meitner's scientific curiosity emerged at the age of eight, evidenced by her practice of keeping a notebook of her research under her pillow. She developed an affinity for mathematics and science, conducting studies on the chromatic properties of oil slicks, thin films, and reflected light. Given that teaching was the sole professional path accessible to women at the time, she enrolled in a girls' high school to train as a French teacher. Beyond French, her curriculum encompassed bookkeeping, arithmetic, history, geography, science, and gymnastics. Her high school education concluded in 1892.
Prior to 1897, women were prohibited from enrolling in public higher education institutions in Vienna. Upon the removal of this restriction, the prerequisite of a gymnasium education was waived, requiring women only to successfully complete the matura, a secondary school leaving examination essential for university admission. In 1900, her sister Gisela successfully passed the matura and subsequently matriculated into medical school. Meitner commenced private instruction with two other young women in 1899, condensing several years of secondary education into a two-year period. Arthur Szarvasy provided instruction in physics.
In July 1901, they undertook an external matura examination at the Akademisches Gymnasium. Among the fourteen female candidates, four were successful, notably Meitner and Henriette Boltzmann, daughter of the distinguished physicist Ludwig Boltzmann.
Academic and Professional Career
University of Vienna
Meitner commenced her studies at the University of Vienna in October 1901. She expressed profound inspiration from Ludwig Boltzmann, frequently recounting his lectures with great enthusiasm. Her doctoral dissertation was jointly supervised by Franz Exner and his assistant, Hans Benndorf. The thesis was submitted on November 20, 1905, and received approval on November 28. Following a successful oral examination conducted by Exner and Boltzmann on December 19, she was conferred her doctorate on February 1, 1906. Meitner achieved the distinction of being the second woman to obtain a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Vienna, succeeding Olga Steindler, who earned her degree in 1903. Selma Freud, who worked in the same laboratory, became the third female recipient in 1906. Meitner's thesis, titled Wärmeleitung in inhomogenen Körpern ('Thermal Conduction in Inhomogeneous Bodies'), was published on February 22, 1906.
Paul Ehrenfest commissioned Meitner to analyze an optics article by Lord Rayleigh, which described an experiment yielding results that Rayleigh himself could not elucidate. Meitner successfully explained these results, formulated predictions derived from her explanation, and subsequently validated them experimentally, thereby demonstrating her capacity for independent and unsupervised research. Her findings were published in a report titled "Some Conclusions Derived from the Fresnel Reflection Formula". During this research period in 1906, Stefan Meyer introduced Meitner to the nascent field of radioactivity. Her initial investigations focused on alpha particles. Through experiments involving collimators and metal foil, she observed that the scattering of alpha particle beams intensified proportionally with the mass of the metal atoms. These findings were submitted to the Physikalische Zeitschrift on June 29, 1907. This particular experiment contributed to Ernest Rutherford's subsequent prediction of the nuclear atom.
Friedrich Wilhelm University
With her father's encouragement and financial backing, Meitner enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where the eminent physicist Max Planck was a faculty member. Planck extended an invitation for her to This was a notable departure from Planck's publicly stated opposition to the general admission of women to universities, suggesting he perceived Meitner as an exceptional case. She developed a friendship with Planck's twin daughters, Emma and Grete (born in 1889), who shared her passion for music.
As Planck's lectures did not occupy her entire schedule, Meitner proactively contacted Heinrich Rubens, director of the experimental physics institute, to inquire about research opportunities. Rubens expressed willingness to accommodate her in his laboratory. He further mentioned that Otto Hahn, from the chemistry institute, was seeking a physicist for collaboration. Shortly thereafter, she was introduced to Hahn. Hahn had previously studied radioactive substances under William Ramsay and Ernest Rutherford, and was already recognized for discovering what were then considered several novel radioactive elements. Hahn, who was Meitner's contemporary, impressed her with his informal and accessible demeanor. While in Montreal, Hahn had developed a familiarity with collaborating with physicists, notably including Harriet Brooks, a female scientist.
Emil Fischer, director of the chemistry institute, allocated a former woodworking shop (Holzwerkstatt) in the basement for Hahn's laboratory use. Hahn outfitted this space with electroscopes to quantify alpha and beta particles, as well as gamma rays. However, the woodworking shop proved unsuitable for research, leading Alfred Stock, head of the inorganic chemistry department, to grant Hahn access to one of his private laboratories. Similar to Meitner, Hahn received no salary, subsisting on a paternal allowance, which was slightly more substantial than Meitner's. He successfully completed his habilitation in early 1907, subsequently attaining the status of a Privatdozent. Many organic chemists at the institute dismissed Hahn's research—which involved identifying imperceptible traces of isotopes through their radioactivity—as not constituting genuine chemistry. A department head notably commented, "It is astonishing what qualifications now suffice to become a Privatdozent!" Lise Meitner contributed to the discovery of the radioactive element protactinium.
Initially, Meitner faced significant challenges due to the prevailing academic policies. At that time, women were not permitted to enroll in universities within the German state of the Kingdom of Prussia, which encompassed Berlin. Meitner's access was limited to the woodworking shop, which featured an independent external entrance, preventing her from entering other areas of the institute, including Hahn's laboratory upstairs. For restroom facilities, she was compelled to use those located at a nearby restaurant. However, the subsequent year marked a policy shift, with women gaining admission to Prussian universities; consequently, Fischer rescinded the restrictions and arranged for the installation of women's toilets within the building. This change was not universally welcomed by all chemists. In contrast, the Institute of Physics demonstrated greater acceptance, where Meitner cultivated friendships with several physicists, including Otto von Baeyer, James Franck, Gustav Hertz, Robert Pohl, Max Planck, Peter Pringsheim, and Wilhelm Westphal.
In their initial years of collaboration, Meitner and Hahn co-authored nine scientific papers: three in 1908 and six in 1909. Together, they identified and refined radioactive recoil, a physical separation technique where a daughter nucleus is forcibly ejected during the decay process. Hahn's primary focus lay in the identification of novel elements (now recognized as isotopes), whereas Meitner's interest centered on comprehending their associated radiation. Meitner recognized that radioactive recoil, initially observed by Harriet Brooks in 1904, presented a novel method for detecting radioactive substances. Their subsequent research led to the discovery of two additional isotopes: bismuth-211 and thallium-207. Meitner developed a particular interest in beta particles, which were then understood to be electrons. While alpha particles exhibited characteristic energy emissions, she anticipated a similar discrete energy profile for beta particles. Hahn and Meitner meticulously investigated the absorption of beta particles by aluminum, yielding perplexing results. In 1914, James Chadwick demonstrated that electrons emitted from the nucleus formed a continuous spectrum; however, Meitner found this difficult to reconcile, as it appeared to contradict the principles of quantum physics, which posited that atomic electrons occupy only discrete energy states (quanta).
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry
In 1912, Hahn and Meitner relocated to the recently established Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry in Berlin. Hahn accepted Fischer's invitation to serve as a junior assistant, overseeing the radiochemistry section, which represented Germany's inaugural laboratory of its kind. This appointment included the title of "professor" and an annual salary of 5,000 marks (equivalent to €29,000 in 2021). In contrast to university institutions, the privately funded KWI did not enforce policies that excluded women; however, Meitner initially worked without remuneration as a "guest" within Hahn's section. Her financial situation may have become precarious following her father's death in 1910. Concerned about her potential return to Vienna, Planck subsequently appointed her as his assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, part of the Friedrich Wilhelm University. In this capacity, she was responsible for grading student assignments. This marked her first salaried academic position. Despite being the lowest tier on the academic hierarchy, Meitner became the first female scientific assistant in Prussia.
On October 23, 1912, during the official inauguration of the KWI for Chemistry, Meitner was formally presented to Kaiser Wilhelm II by institute officials. The following year, she achieved the status of a Mitglied ('associate'), an appointment shared with Hahn, though her salary remained comparatively lower. Concurrently, the radioactivity section was renamed the Hahn-Meitner Laboratory, an occasion Meitner celebrated with a dinner party at the Hotel Adlon. Subsequently, the individual remunerations of Hahn and Meitner were considerably augmented by royalties from mesothorium (radium-228, also termed "German radium"), which was produced for medical applications. In 1914, Hahn received 66,000 marks from these royalties (equivalent to €369,000 in 2021), from which he allocated ten percent to Meitner. That same year, Meitner was extended an offer for an academic position in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary. However, Planck conveyed to Fischer his strong preference for Meitner to remain, prompting Fischer to arrange for her salary to be doubled to 3,000 marks (equivalent to €17,000 in 2021).
The relocation to new facilities proved highly advantageous, as the previous wood shop had become thoroughly contaminated by spilled radioactive liquids and vented radioactive gases, which subsequently decayed and settled as radioactive dust, rendering precise measurements impossible. To preserve the integrity of their new, uncontaminated laboratories, Hahn and Meitner implemented rigorous operational procedures. Chemical and physical measurements were conducted in separate rooms, personnel handling radioactive substances were required to follow strict protocols, including refraining from handshakes, and rolls of toilet paper were strategically placed near every telephone and door handle. Highly radioactive materials were initially stored in the former wood shop, and later transferred to a purpose-built radium facility located on the institute grounds.
World War I and the Discovery of Protactinium
In July 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Hahn was called to active military duty with a Landwehr regiment. Concurrently, Meitner undertook training as an X-ray technician and completed an anatomy course at the city hospital in Lichterfelde. During this period, she finalized her pre-war research on the beta ray spectrum, which she had commenced with Hahn and Baeyer, and independently completed her study of the uranium decay chain. In July 1915, Meitner returned to Vienna, where she joined the Austrian Army as an X-ray nurse-technician. Her unit was deployed to the Eastern Front in Poland, and she subsequently served on the Italian Front before her discharge in September 1916.
In October, Meitner resumed her research activities at the KWI for Chemistry. By January 1917, she had been appointed as the head of her own physics section, leading to the division of the Hahn-Meitner Laboratory into distinct Hahn and Meitner Laboratories. Concurrently, her salary was increased to 4,000 marks (equivalent to €10,000 in 2021). Upon Hahn's return to Berlin on leave, they revisited an unresolved aspect of their pre-war investigations: the quest for the mother isotope of actinium (element 89). According to the radioactive displacement law formulated by Fajans and Soddy, this precursor isotope was predicted to be an isotope of the then-undiscovered element 91, situated between thorium (element 90) and uranium (element 92) on the periodic table. Although Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring had identified this missing element in 1913, naming it brevium due to its short half-life, the specific isotope they discovered was a beta emitter. Consequently, it could not serve as the mother isotope of actinium, necessitating the identification of another isotope of the same element.
By 1914, Hahn and Meitner had devised an innovative method for isolating the tantalum group from pitchblende, anticipating it would expedite the identification of the novel isotope. When Meitner recommenced this research in 1917, she was compelled to conduct all experimental procedures independently, as Hahn and the majority of the laboratory personnel had been conscripted for military service. In February, she successfully extracted 2 grams of silicon dioxide (SiO
§67§) from a 21-gram sample of pitchblende. She reserved 1.5 grams and introduced a tantalum pentafluoride (TaF
§17
18§) carrier to the remaining 0.5 grams, subsequently dissolving it in hydrogen fluoride (HF). The solution was then subjected to boiling in concentrated sulfuric acid (H
§3031§SO
§3940§), leading to the precipitation of a substance presumed to be element 91, which was confirmed as an alpha emitter. Upon Hahn's return on leave in April, they collaboratively designed a sequence of experiments to exclude alternative sources of alpha particles. The only known elements exhibiting comparable chemical properties were lead-210 (which undergoes alpha decay to polonium-210 via bismuth-210) and thorium-230.
Continued research necessitated additional quantities of pitchblende. Meitner traveled to Vienna, where she consulted with Stefan Meyer. Despite wartime prohibitions on uranium export from Austria, Meyer provided her with a kilogram of uranium residue—pitchblende from which uranium had been extracted—which proved more advantageous for her experimental objectives. Subsequent analyses confirmed that the observed alpha activity did not originate from these materials. The next phase involved identifying evidence of actinium, which again required more pitchblende. However, Meyer was unable to provide further assistance due to renewed export restrictions. Meitner subsequently procured 100 grams of "double residue"—pitchblende devoid of both uranium and radium—from Friedrich Oskar Giesel. Initial experiments with 43 grams of this material encountered difficulties due to its distinct composition. Nevertheless, with Giesel's collaboration, she successfully prepared a highly radioactive, purified product. By December 1917, Meitner had isolated both the parent isotope and its actinium daughter product, submitting their collective findings for publication in March 1918.
Despite Fajans and Göhring's initial discovery of the element, established scientific convention dictated that an element be designated by its most stable and prevalent isotope, rendering the name "brevium" unsuitable. Fajans consented to Meitner's proposal to name the element "protoactinium" (later abbreviated to protactinium) and assign it the chemical symbol Pa. In June 1918, Soddy and John Cranston independently reported the extraction of an isotope sample; however, unlike Meitner, they could not characterize its properties. They recognized Meitner's precedence and accepted the proposed nomenclature. The relationship between protactinium and uranium remained enigmatic, as neither of the two then-known uranium isotopes (uranium-234 and uranium-238) decayed into protactinium. This mystery persisted until the discovery of uranium-235 by Arthur Jeffrey Dempster in 1935.
Beta radiation
In 1921, Lise Meitner accepted Manne Siegbahn's invitation to serve as a visiting professor at Lund University, where she delivered a series of lectures on radioactivity. She observed a limited scope of radioactivity research in Sweden but expressed keen interest in X-ray spectroscopy, Siegbahn's area of expertise. At Siegbahn's laboratory, she encountered Dirk Coster, a Dutch doctoral candidate specializing in X-ray spectroscopy, and his wife, Miep, who was pursuing a doctorate in Indonesian language and culture. Upon her return to Berlin, Meitner applied her newly acquired knowledge of X-ray spectroscopy to re-examine beta-ray spectra. At the time, beta emission was understood to comprise primary electrons ejected directly from the nucleus and secondary electrons dislodged from atomic orbits by alpha particles originating from the nucleus. Meitner harbored skepticism regarding Chadwick's assertion that spectral lines exclusively resulted from secondary electrons, while primary electrons constituted a continuous spectrum. Employing methodologies pioneered by Jean Danysz, she analyzed the spectra of lead-210, radium-226, and thorium-238. In 1922, Meitner identified the mechanism responsible for the emission of electrons from atomic surfaces at characteristic energies, a phenomenon now termed the Auger-Meitner effect. This effect is co-designated in honor of Pierre Victor Auger, who independently discovered it in 1923.
In 1920, women in Prussia gained the right to habilitation, and by 1922, Meitner successfully completed hers, becoming a Privatdozentin. She achieved the distinction of being the first woman to obtain habilitation in physics in Prussia and the second in Germany, following Hedwig Kohn. Despite having authored more than 40 publications, which typically exempted her from a thesis requirement, Max von Laue advocated for retaining the inaugural lecture, expressing interest in her discourse. Consequently, she delivered an inaugural lecture titled "Problems of Cosmic Physics." Between 1923 and 1933, she conducted a semesterly colloquium or tutorial at Friedrich Wilhelm University and oversaw doctoral candidates at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. In 1926, she was appointed an außerordentlicher Professor (an 'extraordinary professor'), marking her as Germany's first female university physics professor. Her physics section expanded, and she secured a permanent assistant. Researchers from Germany and internationally traveled to the KWI for Chemistry to undertake studies under her guidance. In 1930, Meitner co-taught a seminar with Leó Szilárd on "Questions of Atomic Physics and Atomic Chemistry."
Meitner commissioned the construction of Berlin's first Wilson cloud chamber at the KWI for Chemistry, subsequently utilizing it with her student Kurt Freitag to investigate the trajectories of alpha particles that did not undergo nuclear collisions. Later, in collaboration with her assistant Kurt Philipp, she employed the chamber to capture the initial images of positron traces generated by gamma radiation. She substantiated Chadwick's hypothesis that discrete spectral lines originated exclusively from secondary electrons, thereby confirming that continuous spectra were indeed entirely attributable to primary electrons. In 1927, Charles Drummond Ellis and William Alfred Wooster measured the energy of the continuous spectrum resulting from the beta decay of bismuth-210 as 0.34 MeV, while the energy of each disintegration was 0.35 MeV. Consequently, the observed spectrum accounted for almost, but not entirely, the total energy. Meitner considered this discrepancy sufficiently problematic to replicate the experiment with Wilhelm Orthmann, employing an enhanced methodology, which ultimately corroborated Ellis and Wooster's findings.
The apparent violation of the law of conservation of energy in beta decay was deemed unacceptable by Meitner. In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli addressed an open letter to Meitner and Hans Geiger, positing that the continuous spectrum arose from the emission of a second, hypothetical particle during beta decay, characterized by an absence of electric charge and negligible or zero rest mass. Enrico Fermi incorporated this concept into his 1934 theory of beta decay, naming the hypothetical neutral particle "neutrino." Although the prospect of detecting neutrinos seemed remote at the time, Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines successfully achieved this in 1956.
Nazi Germany
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany, following the Nazi Party's (NSDAP) emergence as the dominant political force in the Reichstag. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, enacted on April 7, 1933, mandated the removal of Jewish individuals from civil service positions, including those within academia. Despite never attempting to obscure her Jewish heritage, Meitner initially qualified for several exemptions from this law: her employment predated 1914, she had served in the military during the World War, she held Austrian rather than German citizenship, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute operated as a collaborative government-industry entity. Nevertheless, on September 6, she was dismissed from her adjunct professorship, with the stated reasons being that her World War I service was not frontline and her habilitation had not been completed until 1922. This dismissal, however, did not impact her salary or her ongoing research activities at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry. Carl Bosch, director of IG Farben and a principal benefactor of the KWI for Chemistry, provided assurances to Meitner regarding the security of her position at the institute. While Hahn and Meitner retained their leadership roles, their respective assistants, Otto Erbacher and Kurt Philipp, both NSDAP members, progressively gained greater authority over the institute's daily operations.
Other individuals faced less favorable circumstances; her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, was dismissed from his position at the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, a fate also shared by Otto Stern, the institute's director. Stern subsequently secured a position for Frisch with Patrick Blackett at Birkbeck College in England, and Frisch later held a research role at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen from 1934 to 1939. Fritz Strassmann had joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry to study under Hahn, aiming to enhance his career opportunities. Strassmann rejected a financially attractive employment offer due to its prerequisite of political indoctrination and Nazi Party membership; he also resigned from the Society of German Chemists when it was absorbed into the Nazi German Labour Front, refusing to join a Nazi-controlled organization. Consequently, he was precluded from employment in the chemical industry and unable to obtain his habilitation. Meitner successfully convinced Hahn to employ Strassmann as an assistant. Subsequently, Strassmann received recognition as a third collaborator on their published research, occasionally even being listed as the primary author. From 1933 to 1935, Meitner's publications were exclusively featured in the journal Naturwissenschaften, primarily because its editor, Arnold Berliner, who was Jewish, continued to accept submissions from Jewish scientists. This editorial policy led to a boycott of the publication, culminating in Berliner's dismissal by the publisher, Springer-Verlag, in August 1935.
Transmutation
Following Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932, Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot irradiated aluminum foil with alpha particles, observing the formation of a short-lived radioactive phosphorus isotope. They further noted that positron emission persisted even after the cessation of the irradiation process. Their findings not only revealed a novel mode of radioactive decay but also demonstrated the transmutation of one element into a previously unobserved radioactive isotope of another, thereby artificially inducing radioactivity. Consequently, the scope of radiochemistry expanded beyond specific heavy elements to encompass the entirety of the periodic table. Chadwick observed that, due to their electrical neutrality, neutrons could penetrate atomic nuclei with greater facility than either protons or alpha particles. Enrico Fermi and his research team in Rome subsequently adopted this concept, initiating experiments involving the neutron irradiation of various elements.
The radioactive displacement law, established by Fajans and Soddy, posits that beta decay elevates isotopes by one element on the periodic table, while alpha decay lowers them by two. When Fermi's team subjected uranium atoms to neutron bombardment, they detected a complex array of half-lives. This led Fermi to conclude that new elements with atomic numbers exceeding 92, designated as transuranium elements, had been generated. Although Meitner and Hahn had not collaborated for an extended period, Meitner was keen to examine Fermi's findings. Hahn initially hesitated but altered his perspective when Aristid von Grosse suggested that Fermi's observation might correspond to an isotope of protactinium. Hahn later recounted, "The central question seemed to be whether Fermi had discovered isotopes of transuranium elements or isotopes of the next-lower element, protactinium. Consequently, Lise Meitner and I chose to reproduce Fermi's experiments to determine if the 13-minute isotope was indeed a protactinium isotope. This decision was logical, considering our prior identification of protactinium."
Between 1934 and 1938, Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann discovered numerous radioactive transmutation products, all of which they classified as transuranic. At that juncture, the actinide series had not yet been established, and uranium was incorrectly assumed to be a Group 6 element, analogous to tungsten. This led to the inference that the initial transuranic elements would resemble Group 7 to 10 elements, such as rhenium and the platinoids. They confirmed the presence of multiple isotopes for at least four such elements, though they mistakenly identified them as elements with atomic numbers 93 through 96. These scientists were the first to measure the 23-minute half-life of the synthetic radioisotope uranium-239 and to chemically confirm its isotopic identity as uranium. Nevertheless, due to their inadequate neutron sources, they could not advance this work to its logical conclusion and definitively identify the true element 93. They cataloged ten distinct half-lives, with varying degrees of certainty. To account for these findings, Meitner was obliged to hypothesize a new category of nuclear reaction and the alpha decay of uranium, neither of which had been previously documented or possessed supporting physical evidence. Concurrently, Hahn and Strassmann refined their chemical protocols, while Meitner conceived novel experiments to scrutinize the reaction processes.
In May 1937, Hahn and Meitner published parallel reports: Meitner was the lead author of an article in Zeitschrift für Physik, while Hahn was the primary author of a publication in Chemische Berichte. Hahn concluded his report with the emphatic statement: Vor allem steht ihre chemische Verschiedenheit von allen bisher bekannten Elementen außerhalb jeder Diskussion ('Above all, their chemical distinction from all previously known elements needs no further discussion'). Meitner, conversely, expressed increasing uncertainty. She considered the possibility that the reactions stemmed from different uranium isotopes, of which uranium-238, uranium-235, and uranium-234 were known. However, her calculation of the neutron cross-section yielded a value too high to be attributed to any isotope other than the most abundant, uranium-238. She therefore concluded that this phenomenon represented another instance of nuclear isomerism, a concept Hahn had previously discovered in protactinium. Consequently, Meitner's report ended on a distinct note from Hahn's, asserting: "The process must be neutron capture by uranium-238, which leads to three isomeric nuclei of uranium-239. This result is very difficult to reconcile with current concepts of the nucleus."
Forced Departure from Germany
Subsequent to the Anschluss, Germany's annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938, Meitner was stripped of her Austrian citizenship. Niels Bohr offered her a lecturing opportunity in Copenhagen, and Paul Scherrer invited her to a fully sponsored congress in Switzerland. Although Carl Bosch affirmed her ability to remain at the KWI for Chemistry, by May, Meitner realized that the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture was scrutinizing her circumstances. On May 9, she decided to accept Bohr's invitation to Copenhagen, where Frisch was working. However, upon seeking a travel visa at the Danish consulate, she was informed that her Austrian passport was no longer considered valid by Denmark. This rendered her unable to leave for Denmark, Switzerland, or any other country.
Bohr's arrival in Berlin during June revealed his profound concern regarding the situation. Upon his return to Copenhagen, he initiated efforts to secure an academic position for Meitner within Scandinavia. Concurrently, he requested Hans Kramers to investigate potential opportunities in the Netherlands. Kramers subsequently contacted Coster, who then informed Adriaan Fokker. Coster and Fokker collaboratively endeavored to obtain a position for Meitner at the University of Groningen. Their investigation revealed that the Rockefeller Foundation declined to fund refugee scientists, and the International Federation of University Women was overwhelmed with support applications originating from Austria. On June 27, Meitner accepted a one-year appointment at Manne Siegbahn's newly established Manne Siegbahn Laboratory in Stockholm, then under construction and designated for nuclear physics research. However, on July 4, she was informed that academics were no longer permitted to travel internationally.
Peter Debye, facilitated by Bohr in Copenhagen, communicated with Coster and Fokker, who subsequently petitioned the Netherlands Ministry of Education to permit Meitner's entry into the Netherlands. Since foreign nationals were prohibited from paid employment, a non-salaried appointment as a privaat-docente became a prerequisite. Wander Johannes de Haas and Anton Eduard van Arkel successfully arranged such a position at Leiden University. Coster additionally consulted with the chief of the border guards, receiving assurances of Meitner's admission. E. H. Ebels, a local politician from the border region and an acquaintance of Coster, directly addressed the border guards.
Coster arrived in Berlin on July 11, residing with Debye. The subsequent morning, Meitner arrived early at the KWI for Chemistry, where Hahn outlined the escape plan. To avert suspicion, she adhered to her customary routine, staying at the institute until 20:00 to revise a colleague's manuscript for publication. Hahn and Paul Rosbaud assisted her in packing two modest suitcases containing only summer attire. Hahn provided her with a diamond ring, inherited from his mother, for emergency use; she carried only 10 marks in her purse (equivalent to €40 in 2021). Subsequently, she spent the night at Hahn's residence. The following morning, Meitner encountered Coster at the railway station, where they feigned a coincidental meeting. They proceeded via a less-frequented railway line to Bad Nieuweschans railway station on the border, crossing it without incident; German border guards may have presumed Meitner to be a professor's wife. A telegram from Pauli subsequently informed Coster that he had become "as famous for the abduction of Lise Meitner as for the discovery of hafnium."
On July 26, Meitner received confirmation that Sweden had authorized her entry using her Austrian passport; two days later, she flew to Copenhagen, where Frisch greeted her, and she resided with Niels and Margrethe Bohr at their Tisvilde holiday home. On August 1, she journeyed by train and steamship to Gothenburg station in Sweden, where Eva von Bahr met her. They then traveled by train and steamer to Von Bahr's residence in Kungälv, remaining there until September. Hahn informed all personnel at the KWI for Chemistry that Meitner had departed for Vienna to On August 23, she formally requested retirement from Bosch. Bosch attempted to dispatch her personal effects to Sweden, but the Reich Ministry of Education mandated their retention within Germany.
Meitner expressed apprehension regarding her family residing in Austria. Among her initial endeavors in Sweden was to apply for a Swedish immigration permit for Gusti and her husband, Justinian (Jutz) Frisch. Hahn designated Josef Mattauch as her successor for the head of the physics section and traveled to Vienna to extend the offer. During his visit, he dined with Meitner's sisters, Gusti and Gisela, and their husbands, Jutz Frisch and Karl Lion, on November 9. The following day, Gusti notified him of Frisch's arrest. On that same day, Meitner arrived in Copenhagen; securing a travel visa had proven challenging due to her invalidated Austrian passport. Hahn joined her in Copenhagen on November 13, engaging in discussions concerning uranium research with Meitner, Bohr, and Otto Robert Frisch.
Nuclear fission.
Hahn and Strassmann successfully isolated three radium isotopes, confirming their identities through half-life verification. They employed a four-step fractional crystallization process, adding barium bromide crystals to separate the radium from its barium carrier. Given that radium preferentially precipitates in a barium bromide solution, each subsequent fraction was expected to contain a reduced amount of radium. Surprisingly, no discernible difference was observed across any of the fractions. To preclude any procedural errors, they validated their method using established radium isotopes, confirming its efficacy. On December 19, Hahn communicated with Meitner, apprising her that the radium isotopes exhibited chemical properties analogous to barium. Driven by the desire to finalize their work before the Christmas recess, Hahn and Strassmann promptly submitted their discoveries to Naturwissenschaften on December 22, foregoing Meitner's response. Hahn's concluding remarks in the paper stated: "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."
Typically, Frisch observed Christmas with Meitner in Berlin; however, in 1938, Meitner accepted an invitation from Eva von Bahr to celebrate with her family in Kungälv and subsequently requested Frisch to accompany her. Meitner then received Hahn's correspondence, which detailed his chemical evidence indicating that a portion of the product resulting from the neutron bombardment of uranium was barium. Barium possessed an atomic mass 40% lower than uranium, a significant disparity that could not be explained by any previously understood radioactive decay mechanisms. Despite this, she promptly responded to Hahn, remarking: "At the moment the assumption of such a thoroughgoing breakup seems very difficult to me, but in nuclear physics we have experienced so many surprises, that one cannot unconditionally say: 'It is impossible.'"
Meitner unequivocally rejected any notion that Hahn's identification of barium was erroneous, holding absolute confidence in his chemical proficiency. Subsequently, Meitner and Frisch deliberated on the potential mechanism for this phenomenon. Prior experiments in atomic fission had consistently lacked sufficient energy to dislodge anything beyond individual protons or alpha particles; however, a barium nucleus was considerably more substantial. They then explored the liquid-drop model of the nucleus, originally proposed by George Gamow, postulating that a nucleus might elongate and subsequently cleave into two distinct entities.
Frisch subsequently documented:
At that juncture, we both settled upon a tree trunk (our entire discussion having transpired during a walk through the snow-covered woods, with me on skis and Lise Meitner asserting her ability to maintain the same pace without them), and commenced calculations on available scraps of paper. We determined that the charge of a uranium nucleus was indeed sufficiently potent to almost entirely counteract the effects of surface tension. Consequently, the uranium nucleus could plausibly resemble a highly unstable, oscillating droplet, poised to undergo division upon the slightest stimulus, such as the impact of a solitary neutron.
A subsequent challenge emerged: following their separation, the two resulting droplets would be propelled apart by their mutual electrostatic repulsion, thereby attaining considerable velocity and, consequently, a substantial energy output, approximately 200 MeV in total. The origin of this immense energy required explanation. Providentially, Lise Meitner recalled the empirical formula for calculating nuclear masses and deduced that the combined mass of the two nuclei formed from the fission of a uranium nucleus would be approximately one-fifth the mass of a proton less than the original uranium nucleus. In accordance with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle, E = mc§45§, the disappearance of mass corresponds to the creation of energy. This calculated mass deficit, equivalent to one-fifth of a proton's mass, precisely corresponded to 200 MeV, thus providing a coherent explanation for the observed energy release.
Meitner and Frisch accurately interpreted Hahn's experimental findings, concluding that the uranium nucleus had undergone fission, splitting into two approximately equal parts. The initial two reactions observed by the Berlin research group involved the formation of lighter elements resulting from the disintegration of uranium nuclei. The third reaction, characterized by a 23-minute half-life, represented a decay into the genuine element 93. Upon his return to Copenhagen, Frisch communicated these findings to Bohr, who reportedly expressed astonishment, exclaiming, "What idiots we have been!" Bohr committed to withholding public disclosure until a manuscript was prepared for submission. To expedite dissemination, they resolved to submit a concise, one-page communication to Nature. At that juncture, the sole empirical evidence available was the presence of barium. Logically, the formation of barium implied the concomitant production of krypton. However, Hahn had erroneously assumed that atomic masses, rather than atomic numbers, should sum to 239, leading him to identify the other product as masurium (technetium) and consequently neglecting to verify the presence of krypton.
92U + n →
56Ba +
36Kr + some n
Through a series of extensive telephone discussions, Meitner and Frisch devised a straightforward experimental procedure to substantiate their hypothesis: measuring the recoil of the fission fragments. This was to be achieved using a Geiger counter calibrated with a threshold exceeding that of alpha particles. Frisch executed this experiment on January 13, observing pulses generated by the reaction precisely as anticipated. Recognizing the necessity for a nomenclature for this novel nuclear phenomenon, he consulted William A. Arnold, an American biologist collaborating with George de Hevesy. Frisch inquired about the biological term for the process by which living cells undergo division into two entities. Arnold informed him that biologists referred to this process as "fission." Subsequently, Frisch adopted this term for the nuclear process in his scientific publication. Both manuscripts were dispatched to Nature on January 16; the collaborative note was published on February 11, followed by Frisch's paper detailing the recoil phenomenon on February 18.
The cumulative impact of these three seminal reports—the initial Hahn-Strassmann publications dated January 6 and February 10, 1939, alongside the Frisch-Meitner publication of February 11, 1939—profoundly stimulated the scientific community. Subsequently, in 1940, Frisch and Rudolf Peierls co-authored the Frisch–Peierls memorandum, a document that conclusively demonstrated the theoretical feasibility of generating an atomic explosion.
Nobel Prize Recognition
Notwithstanding numerous accolades bestowed upon Lise Meitner during her lifetime, she was not awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission, an honor conferred solely upon Otto Hahn. Meitner received 49 nominations for Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry but was never a laureate. On November 15, 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared Hahn as the recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, citing "his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei." Meitner had critically advised Hahn and Strassmann to conduct more rigorous testing of their radium samples and had informed Hahn of the potential for the uranium nucleus to undergo disintegration. Her pivotal contributions were indispensable; without them, Hahn would not have identified the fission of the uranium nucleus.
In 1945, the Nobel Committee for Chemistry in Sweden, responsible for selecting the Nobel laureate in Chemistry, resolved to bestow the award exclusively upon Hahn, who learned of his recognition via a newspaper while interned at Farm Hall in England. During the 1990s, the previously confidential records of the Nobel Committee's deliberations were declassified. This disclosure enabled Ruth Lewin Sime, in her comprehensive 1996 biography of Meitner, to re-evaluate the circumstances surrounding Meitner's omission. In a 1997 article published in the American Physical Society journal Physics Today, Sime, alongside her collaborators Elisabeth Crawford and Mark Walker, articulated the following:
It appears that Lise Meitner did not share the 1944 prize because the structure of the Nobel committees was ill-suited to assess interdisciplinary work; because the members of the chemistry committee were unable or unwilling to judge her contribution fairly; and because during the war the Swedish scientists relied on their own limited expertise. Meitner's exclusion from the chemistry award may well be summarized as a mixture of disciplinary bias, political obtuseness, ignorance, and haste.
Max Perutz, a recipient of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, subsequently arrived at a comparable conclusion.
The documents, which remained sealed in the Nobel Committee's archives for five decades, now disclose that the extensive deliberations by the Nobel jury were compromised by an inadequate acknowledgment of both the collaborative research preceding the discovery and Meitner's subsequent written and oral contributions following her departure from Berlin.
The five-member physics committee comprised Manne Siegbahn, his former student Erik Hulthén (professor of experimental physics at Uppsala University), and Axel Lindh, who later succeeded Hulthén. All three were affiliated with the Siegbahn school of X-ray spectroscopy. The strained relationship between Siegbahn and Meitner, alongside a predisposition towards experimental rather than theoretical physics, significantly influenced the committee's decisions. Hulthén's assessment of Meitner and Frisch's work relied on pre-war publications, leading him to conclude that their contributions were not sufficiently groundbreaking. He further contended that the physics prize was traditionally awarded for experimental work, a claim that had not been consistently true for many years. Meitner herself, in a contemporary letter, acknowledged, "Surely Hahn fully deserved the Nobel Prize for chemistry. There is really no doubt about it. 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 Nobel Prize was widely anticipated, as both he and Meitner had received multiple nominations for both chemistry and physics prizes even prior to the discovery of nuclear fission. According to the Nobel Prize archive, Meitner garnered 19 nominations for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 30 nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1967. Her distinguished nominators included Arthur Compton, Dirk Coster, Kasimir Fajans, James Franck, Otto Hahn, Oskar Klein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and Max Born. Despite not receiving the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to participate in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962.
Later Life
Meitner observed Siegbahn's reluctance to accommodate her. Upon the initial offer to relocate to Sweden, Siegbahn had cited a lack of funds, proposing only a workspace. Subsequently, Eva von Bahr contacted Carl Wilhelm Oseen, who secured financial support from the Nobel Foundation. While this arrangement provided Meitner with laboratory facilities, it necessitated her undertaking tasks she had previously delegated to laboratory technicians for two decades. Ruth Lewin Sime commented:
Sweden exhibited limited general sympathy for refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, a situation attributable to its modest size, fragile economy, absence of an established immigrant tradition, and a deeply entrenched pro-German academic culture. This cultural orientation persisted largely unchanged until the mid-war period, when Germany's eventual defeat became apparent. During the war, members of Siegbahn's research group perceived Meitner as an alienated, reclusive, and despondent figure. They failed to comprehend the profound displacement and anxiety inherent to all refugees, the trauma associated with losing friends and relatives in the Holocaust, or the unique isolation experienced by a woman who had singularly dedicated her life to scientific endeavor.
On January 14, 1939, Meitner received news that her brother-in-law, Jutz, had been released from Dachau and that he and her sister Gusti were authorized to emigrate to Sweden. Jutz's former employer, Gottfried Bermann, who had previously fled to Sweden, extended an offer for Jutz to reclaim his previous position at the publishing firm upon his arrival. Niels Bohr intervened on Jutz's behalf with Swedish official Justitieråd Alexandersson, who confirmed that Jutz would be granted a labor permit upon entering Sweden. Jutz remained employed there until his retirement in 1948, subsequently relocating to Cambridge to join Otto Robert Frisch. Concurrently, her sister Gisela and brother-in-law Karl Lion moved to England, prompting Meitner to also contemplate such a move. She visited Cambridge in July 1939 and accepted a three-year contractual position at the Cavendish Laboratory, affiliated with Girton College, Cambridge, an offer extended by William Lawrence Bragg and John Cockcroft. However, the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 precluded her relocation.
In Sweden, Meitner diligently pursued her research endeavors. Her work involved measuring the neutron cross-sections of thorium, lead, and uranium, employing dysprosium as a neutron detector—an assay technique initially developed by George de Hevesy and Hilde Levi. Meitner successfully facilitated the relocation of Hedwig Kohn, who was at risk of deportation to Poland, to Sweden, and subsequently her emigration to the United States via the Soviet Union. Although her efforts to extract Stefen Meyer from Germany were unsuccessful, he ultimately survived the conflict. Meitner rejected an invitation to collaborate with Frisch on the British component of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, unequivocally stating, "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" Subsequently, she expressed surprise regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lamenting, "I am sorry that the bomb had to be invented." Following the war, Meitner publicly recognized her moral culpability for remaining in Germany between 1933 and 1938. She articulated this sentiment by writing: "It was not only stupid but very wrong that I did not leave at once." Her regret extended to her own passivity during this era, and she also voiced profound criticism of Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg, and other German scientists. In a letter dated June 1945, addressed to Hahn but never received by him, she conveyed the following:
You all served Nazi Germany and made no attempt at passive resistance. While, to assuage your consciences, you may have occasionally aided an oppressed individual, millions of innocent people were systematically murdered without any public outcry. In neutral Sweden, discussions concerning the post-war treatment of German scholars commenced well before the conflict's conclusion. One must consider, then, the perspectives of the English and Americans. Many, including myself, believe that your sole recourse is to issue a public declaration acknowledging your shared responsibility for these events, stemming from your passivity, and expressing a commitment to undertake reparative actions. However, a significant number consider such an action to be belated. These individuals contend that you first betrayed your friends, then your soldiers and children by allowing them to risk their lives in a criminal war, and ultimately betrayed Germany itself by failing to denounce the senseless destruction of the nation when the war was already unequivocally lost. While this may appear merciless, I maintain that the motivation behind this communication is genuine friendship. Recent days have brought to light unbelievably gruesome revelations from the concentration camps, which surpass all prior apprehensions. Upon hearing a highly detailed report broadcast on English radio by the English and Americans concerning Belsen and Buchenwald, I wept uncontrollably and remained sleepless throughout the night. Consider, too, the individuals who were transported here from those camps. Individuals such as Heisenberg, and millions more, ought to be compelled to confront the reality of these camps and the suffering of their victims. His appearance in Denmark in 1941 remains an indelible memory.
Following the Hiroshima bombing, Meitner achieved considerable public recognition. She participated in a radio interview with Eleanor Roosevelt, and a subsequent broadcast from a New York radio station allowed her to hear her sister Frida's voice for the first time in several years. During this conversation, Meitner stated, "I am of Jewish descent; 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 January 25, 1946, Meitner arrived in New York, where she was welcomed by her sisters Lola and Frida, and by Frisch, who had traveled for two days by train from Los Alamos. Lola's husband, Rudolf Allers, facilitated a visiting professorship for Meitner at the Catholic University of America. Meitner delivered lectures at Princeton University, Harvard University, and Columbia University, engaging in discussions on physics with Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, Tsung-Dao Lee, Yang Chen-Ning, and Isidor Isaac Rabi. Her travels included a C., with James Chadwick, then head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project. She also encountered Major General Leslie Groves, the project's director. Meitner lectured at Smith College and visited Chicago, where she met Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, and Leo Szilard. On July 8, Meitner embarked on the RMS Queen Mary for England, where she held meetings with Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born. Concurrently, belated commemorations for Isaac Newton's 300th birthday were held, with Max Planck being the sole German invited to attend.
Siegbahn's persistent opposition to Meitner receiving the Nobel Prize served as a catalyst for her Swedish colleagues, who subsequently sought to secure a more advantageous professional role for her. In 1947, Meitner relocated to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where Gudmund Borelius had established a new atomic research facility. Previously, nuclear physics research in Sweden had been notably insufficient, a deficiency often attributed to Siegbahn's lack of support for Meitner's contributions; however, this expertise was now deemed critical for Sweden's national future. At KTH, Meitner was allocated three rooms, two assistants, and access to technical staff, with Sigvard Eklund occupying the adjacent office. The initial intent was for Meitner to hold the salary and designation of a "research professor," a position devoid of teaching responsibilities.
The intended professorship did not materialize, as Tage Erlander, then Minister for Education, unexpectedly assumed the role of Prime Minister of Sweden in 1946. Nevertheless, Borelius and Klein ensured that Meitner received a professor's salary, even without the formal title. In 1949, she was conferred Swedish citizenship; a special act passed by the Riksdag allowed her to retain her Austrian citizenship concurrently. Plans for R1, Sweden's inaugural nuclear reactor, received approval in 1947, with Eklund appointed as project director. Meitner was instrumental in its design and construction. Her final scientific publications, appearing in 1950 and 1951, focused on the application of "magic numbers" to nuclear fission. She retired in 1960 and subsequently relocated to the United Kingdom, where many of her relatives resided.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Meitner frequently visited Germany, often staying with Hahn and his family for multiple days. Hahn recounted in his memoirs that their friendship endured throughout their lives. Notwithstanding the significant challenges within their relationship, arguably more acutely experienced by Meitner, she consistently expressed profound affection for Hahn. On milestone birthdays, including their 70th, 75th, 80th, and 85th, they delivered tributes honoring each other's contributions. Hahn consistently highlighted Meitner's intellectual prowess and her research, such as her work on the nuclear shell model, while notably eliding the circumstances of her relocation to Sweden. Conversely, Meitner emphasized Hahn's personal attributes, including his charisma and musical talent.
In 1964, a demanding journey to the United States precipitated a heart attack for Meitner, necessitating several months of recuperation. Her physical and mental faculties were subsequently compromised by atherosclerosis. Following a hip fracture from a fall and several minor strokes in 1967, Meitner achieved a partial recovery, yet her health ultimately deteriorated to the extent that she required residence in a Cambridge nursing home. Meitner passed away peacefully in her sleep on 27 October 1968, at the age of 89. Due to her fragile health, her family withheld information regarding the deaths of Otto Hahn on 28 July 1968 and his wife Edith on 14 August. In accordance with her wishes, she was interred in the village of Bramley, Hampshire, at St James parish church, alongside her younger brother Walter, who had died in 1964. Her nephew, Frisch, authored the epitaph on her headstone, which states:
Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity.
Accolades and Distinctions
Albert Einstein lauded Meitner as the "German Marie Curie." During her 1946 Truman at the Women's National Press Club. Her numerous accolades include the Leibniz Medal from the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1924), the Lieben Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1925), the Ellen Richards Prize (1928), the City of Vienna Prize for science (1947), the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society (jointly with Hahn, 1949), the inaugural Otto Hahn Prize of the German Chemical Society (1954), the Wilhelm Exner Medal (1960), and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1967).
In 1957, President Theodor Heuss of Germany bestowed upon Meitner the peace class of the Pour le Mérite, the nation's preeminent honor for scientists, an award also granted to Hahn in the same year. Meitner was inducted as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1945, achieving full membership in 1951, which enabled her participation in the Nobel Prize selection process. Subsequently, in 1955, she was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Additionally, she became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960. Her academic distinctions include honorary doctorates from Adelphi College, the University of Rochester, Rutgers University, and Smith College in the United States, as well as from the Free University of Berlin in Germany and Stockholm University in Sweden.
In September 1966, the United States Atomic Energy Commission jointly conferred the Enrico Fermi Award upon Hahn, Strassmann, and Meitner, recognizing their pivotal discovery of nuclear fission. The award ceremony took place at the Hofburg palace in Vienna. This marked the inaugural instance of the prize being bestowed upon non-American recipients and the first time it was presented to a woman. Meitner's diploma acknowledged her "For pioneering research in the naturally occurring radioactivities and extensive experimental studies leading to the discovery of fission." Hahn's diploma featured a subtly distinct wording: "For pioneering research in the naturally occurring radioactivities and extensive experimental studies culminating in the discovery of fission." While Hahn and Strassmann attended the ceremony, Meitner's ill health prevented her presence, leading Frisch to accept the award on her behalf. Glenn Seaborg, renowned for his discovery of plutonium, personally presented the award to Meitner at Max Perutz's residence in Cambridge on 23 October 1966.
Subsequent to her demise in 1968, Meitner was posthumously recognized with numerous naming honors. In 1997, element 109 was officially designated meitnerium. This distinction made her the first, and to date sole, non-mythological woman to be exclusively honored in this manner (as curium was named for both Marie and Pierre Curie). Further naming tributes include the Hahn–Meitner-Institut in Berlin, craters on both the Moon and Venus, and the main-belt asteroid 6999 Meitner. The European Physical Society instituted the biennial Lise Meitner Prize in 2000, recognizing outstanding research in nuclear science. In 2006, the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden jointly established the "Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award," presented annually to a scientist who has achieved a significant breakthrough in physics. In October 2010, the Free University of Berlin building that formerly housed the KWI for Chemistry, known as the Otto Hahn Building since 1956, was renamed the Hahn-Meitner Building. Subsequently, in July 2014, a statue of Meitner was unveiled in the garden of the Humboldt University of Berlin, positioned alongside similar effigies of Hermann von Helmholtz and Max Planck.
Lise Meitner's legacy is commemorated through various dedications, including schools and streets named in her honor across numerous cities in Austria and Germany. A residential street in Bramley, her final resting place, is also designated Meitner Close. Since 2008, the Austrian Physical Society and the German Physical Society have jointly presented the Lise Meitner Lectures, an annual series of public addresses delivered by prominent female physicists. Concurrently, the AlbaNova University Centre in Stockholm has hosted an annual Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture since 2015. In 2016, the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom instituted the Meitner Medal, recognizing excellence in public engagement with physics. Furthermore, in 2017, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy in the United States designated a significant nuclear energy research initiative in her name. A satellite, ÑuSat 16, also known as "Lise" (COSPAR 2020-079H), was launched on November 6, 2020, bearing her name. The International Atomic Energy Agency has also honored her by naming its library after her and establishing a program designed to offer early- and mid-career women professionals opportunities to engage in a multi-week visiting professional program, thereby enhancing their technical and interpersonal competencies.
Notes
Catalogue of the Lise Meitner papers at the Churchill Archives Centre.
- Catalogue (Archived 5 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine) of the Lise Meitner papers at the Churchill Archives Centre; Archived 22 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- "Lise Meitner," from "Contributions of 20th-Century Women to Physics" (CWP), University of California, Los Angeles.
- Wired.com: "February 11, 1939: Lise Meitner, 'Our Madame Curie'."
- "Lise Meitner," by B. Weintraub, *Chemistry in Israel*, no. 21, May 2006, p. 35.
- Meitner, Lise, in *biografiA Encyclopedia of Austrian Women*.
- Elise Meitner: Co-discoverer of Nuclear Fission.
- List of Meitner's nominations for the Nobel Prize.