Lise Meitner

BIOGRAPHY:

Lise Meitner was born in 7th November 1878, in Viena (Austria). She was from a non-religious Jewish family. Due to the civic Jewish equality, her father could become one of the first Jewish lawyers in Austria . He encouraged his children to study. For this, she studied at the university, where she began to take interest in Physics, from 1901 to 1907.

A bit later, she moved to Berlin and started working with Max Plack, another physical. Thanks to him, she met Otto Hahn, and they got along with each other. They worked at the Berlin University from 1926 to 1933. Unfortunately, in 1936, because of the nazis, she had to ran away. She moved to Stockholm with Hahn’s help, and keep working on their investigations. They discovered the nuclear fission together, and despite their project won a Nobel Award in 1944, her work wasn’t recognized.

She retired in 1953,and a few years later, she moved to England,where she died at the age of 89.

Meitner lived her life in the service of science. She never married and had no children.

LEGACY:

The most important achievement she did was the discovery of the nuclear fission, and even though she wasn’t recognized as part of Hahn’s coworkers in the Nobels, she had public recognition in the Science world. In fact, Otto Hahn was criticized for not giving credit to her. But Lise didn’t only contribute to this important discovery, she also developed the Atomic Theory and the Auger Effect. Besides, she co-discovered new isotopes and an element of the periodic table.

Another interesting fact about her is that she's the only woman who has an element of this table named like her exclusively in her honor, the meitnerium.