Lise meitner

“Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.”

-Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner was an Austrian physicist nationalized in Sweden. She was born in Vienna on November 17, 1978 on a Jewish family. In 1907 he received his doctorate, the second woman to win the second doctorate in Vienna. Then she moved to Berlin where he was assistant Max Plank and measured the wavelength of gamma rays.

In 1917 he was professor of physics at the University of Berlin. Lise worked actively in an investigation that lasted more than 30 years with Otto Hahn, with who she discovered the protactinium in 1918. Its merits include the research conducted in 1939, in Copenhagen along with his nephew, Otto Frisch, about transmutations of elements and especially the fission of uranium. But surely, was the discovery of nuclear fission what marked his scientific career. With the contribution of Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann produced the first example of nuclear fission.

In 1939 Hahn published his results, but it was Meitner who explained the phenomenon by introducing the term of nuclear fission, in a paper published in the journal Nature. It is known for its research on atomic theory and radioactivity, however, despite pave with his discovery of obtaining point fission the way Otto Hahn, Nobel Prize in Chemistry was never recognized as co-author for being Jewish.

He was also nominated for an award given five times Planck, Heisenberg, Bohr and von Laue, and after World War II, three times, for Bohr. Although he would not be granted can say that Nobel was awarded other prizes and awards medal curiously "Otto Hahn". Meitner spent the last years of his retired life in Cambridge with his nephew died 1968 when it was his 90th birthday.

Inspiration

At the end of December 1938, Meitner and Frisch were walking one day in the snow when inspiration came to Meitner. She sat down in the woods and began calculating the energy involved when nuclei produced by uranium fission fly apart. Her calculated energy, 200 MeV, was huge. Its source was Einstein’s famous equation: E = mc2. Meitner realized that enough mass was converted to energy during nuclear fission to produce an enormous amount of energy.

Quickly Meitner and Frisch wrote a paper, which they submitted to the journal Nature. Meitner told Hahn about her calculation, and Frisch told Niels Bohr.

Discoveries

New Isotopes and Radioactive Recoil

In 1909, Meitner and Hahn discovered radioactive recoil, finding that when an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle, the nucleus will recoil like a gun that has fired a bullet. The recoiling positively charged nucleus can be attracted to a negatively charged electrode. Meitner and Hahn demonstrated that radioactive recoil can be used to produce elements with very high purity.

Interesting Lise Meitner Facts:

Lisa Meitner was the third of eight children born to a Jewish family in Vienna.
In 1905 she became the second woman to earn a PhD in physics at the University of Vienna which was quite an accomplishment since it was unusual for a woman to attend public universities.
She was the first woman allowed by Max Planck to attend his lectures and after a year became his assistant.

Although not a Nobel-winner, Meitner was quite famous enough for U.S. President Truman in 1946 to quip, “So, you’re the little lady who got us into all of this!” Meitner and Hahn had little idea that their basic research would turn out to be useful in making weapons of awesome destructive force, however. When asked to join the Manhattan Project in 1943, she replied, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”

Instead of a Nobel Prize, Meitner has been honored with an even more enduring legacy: Element 109 is named meitnerium in her honor.

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