Women Scientists

Lise Meitner 1878-1968

At a glance:

Physicist who described nuclear fission

Born in Vienna, Meitner was invited to work with physicist Otto Hahn in Berlin but was refused access to his laboratory because she was a woman. She was forced to occupy a broom cupboard instead. In 1934, Hahn and she began experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons with puzzling results. Only later, when working with her nephew Otto Frisch did she realise that what they had actually done was split the uranium nucleus. She was forced to leave Germany by the Nazis in 1938 and fled to Sweden, barely escaping with her life. Meitner recognized there could be a chain reaction causing a huge explosion. In 1939, she and Frisch published a paper describing the process they called nuclear fission. Edward Teller and others who realised its potential as a weapon, persuaded Einstein to write and warn President Roosevelt. This led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project but Meitner refused an offer to work on it at Los Alamos, saying "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" In possibly the most egregious example of a scientist being overlooked for a Nobel, it was Hahn who received the prize for the discovery of nuclear fission, not Meitner.
Lise Meitner

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