Lise Meitner

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The scientist who discovered nuclear fission.

Lise was Austrian, Jewish, and together with Otto Hanh, managed to split uranium for the first time. He received the Nobel prize for it, but although she had been nominated with him, she received no such recognition.

In addition to being an excellent scientist, she lived through a very difficult time from a political point of view, as she had to flee Germany before The Second World War because of her Jewish ancestry.

Lise began her university studies in 1901 by chance, as women could not go to college in Austria. However, the government changed its mind because it needed to provide medical care to Muslim women in occupied Bosnia and Herzogovina.

She immediately excelled at the university and in 1906 she obtained her doctorate. Despite this, to pursue a career as a scientist she had to move to Berlin where she began working in a laboratory with Otto Hahn. As women were not allowed to enter the lab, she had to work in a separate building and received no financial compensation.

In 1908 they published works on Actinium.

In 1912 Hahn agreed to a position as a scientist working in a laboratory and Lise continued to work with him, but as an assistant scientist, and of course with a much lower salary. Together they continued to succeed, but Hahn always appeared as a principal investigator.

In 1933 Hitler came to power and began the persecution of the Jews. Lise continued in Berlin regardless, but in 1938 Hahn was asked to expel Lise from the lab. In 1939 she managed to leave for Holland helped by Von Laue, Planck and Bosch and finally got a job in Sweden, where they did not make her life very easy, at the MAnna Seigbahn institute

She was offered a position working on the Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project and rejected it.

When Otto Hahn received the Nobel prize for splitting uranium, he did not mention Lise. However, she received recognition for her contributions to physics in 1966, when she was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award in the United States.

Lise Meitner died in Cambridge on 27 October 1968. According to her wishes, she was buried in Bramley, Hampshire with her brother Walter, who died in 1964. Her nephew Otto Frisch was the one who composed the inscription on her tombstone, "Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity".

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