Lise Meitner
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2008-06-27T10:01:00Z
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{{Infobox Scientist
|box_width = 300px
|name = Lise Meitner
|image = Lise Meitner 1900.jpg
|image_size = 300px
|caption = Lise Meitner (1878-1968), photo taken in 1900.
|birth_date = [[November 7]] or [[November 17|17]], [[1878]]
|birth_place = [[Vienna]], [[Austria-Hungary|Austria]]
|death_date = {{death date and age|1968|10|27|1878|11|7}}
|death_place = [[Cambridge]], [[England]]
|residence = {{flag|Austria}}</br>{{flag|Germany}}</br>{{flag|Sweden}}</br>{{flag|UK}}
|citizenship = {{flag|Austria}} (pre-1949)</br>{{nowrap|{{flag|Sweden}} (post-1949)}}
|nationality =
|ethnicity = [[Jewish]]
|fields = [[Physicist]]
|workplaces = [[Kaiser Wilhelm Institute]]</br>[[University of Berlin]]
|alma_mater = [[University of Vienna]]
|doctoral_advisor = [[Ludwig Boltzmann]]
|academic_advisors = [[Max Planck]] [[Image:Nobel prize medal.svg|20px]]
|doctoral_students = [[Arnold Flammersfeld]]</br>[[Kan-Chang Wang]]</br>[[Nikolaus Riehl]]
|notable_students = [[Max Delbrück]] [[Image:Nobel prize medal.svg|20px]] </br>[[Hans Hellmann]]
|known_for = [[Nuclear fission]]
|author_abbrev_bot =
|author_abbrev_zoo =
|influences =
|influenced = [[Otto Hahn]] [[Image:Nobel prize medal.svg|20px]]
|awards = [[Lieben Prize]] (1925)</br>[[Max Planck Medal]] (1949)</br>{{nowrap|[[Enrico Fermi Award]] (1966)}}
|religion = [[Judaism]] (pre-1908)</br>[[Lutheran]] (post-1908)
|signature = <!--(filename only)-->
|footnotes = She was the aunt of [[Otto Robert Frisch]]. Her father was [[Philipp Meitner]].
}}
'''Lise Meitner''' ([[November 7]] or [[November 17|17]] [[1878]] – [[October 27]] [[1968]]) was an [[Austria]]n-born, later [[Sweden|Swedish]] [[physics|physicist]] who studied [[radioactivity]] and [[nuclear physics]].<ref name=nytobit>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Lise Meitner Dies; Atomic Pioneer, 89. Lise Meitner, Physicist, Is Dead. Paved Way for Splitting of Atom. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30A11F83455157493CAAB178BD95F4C8685F9 |quote=Dr. Lise Meitner, the Austrian born nuclear physicist who first calculated the enormous energy released by splitting the uranium atom, died today in a Cambridge nursing home. She was 89 years old. |publisher=[[The New York Times]] |date= [[October 28]], [[1968]] |accessdate=2008-04-18 }}</ref>
== Biography ==
Lise Meitner was part of the team that discovered [[nuclear fission]], an achievement for which her colleague [[Otto Hahn]] was awarded the [[Nobel Prize]]. Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of scientific achievement that was ostensibly overlooked by the Nobel committee.<ref name="nytimesnobel">{{cite news | title = No Nobel Prize for Whining | quote=Lise Meitner, the physicist first to recognize that experiments reported by two former colleagues in Berlin meant that atoms had been split, never got a prize, even though one of those colleagues, Otto Hahn, did in 1944. | author = Judson, Horace | date = [[2003-10-20]] | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C02E4DE123EF933A15753C1A9659C8B63 | publisher = ''[[New York Times]]'' | accessdate = 2007-08-03 }}</ref><ref name="heritage">{{cite web | title = Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann | url = http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/atomic/hahn-meitner.html | publisher = ''Chemistry Heritage'' | accessdate = 2007-08-03 }}</ref><ref name="wapost">{{cite web | title = The Woman Behind the Bomb | url = http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/lisemeitner.htm | publisher = ''[[Washington Post]]'' | accessdate = 2007-08-03 }}</ref> A 1997 ''Physics Today'' study concluded that Meitner's omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the Nobel.<ref name="physicstoday">{{cite news | title =Revelations Concerning Lisa Meitner And The Nobel Prize. | url = http://scienceweek.com/2004/rmps-32.htm | publisher = ''Science Week'' | accessdate = 2007-08-03 }}</ref>
==Early years==
Lise Meitner was born into a [[Jew]]ish family as the third of eight children in [[Vienna]], 2nd district (Leopoldstadt). Her father, [[Philipp Meitner]],<ref name="aspap">{{cite web | title = Associated Papers of Lise Meitner | url = http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FMTNR%20AS | publisher = ''Janus'' | accessdate = 2008-01-08 }}</ref> was one of the first [[Jewish]] lawyers in Austria.<ref name="wapost"/> She was born on [[November 7]], [[1878]] . She also shortened her name from Elise to Lise. It is not known why she did so.<ref>Cornwell, ''Hitler's Scientists'', 66.</ref><ref>http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Meitner.shtml</ref> The birth register of Vienna's Jewish community lists Meitner as being born on [[November 17]] [[1878]] but all other documents list it as [[November 7]], which is what she used.<ref>Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996), 1.</ref> Meitner was the second woman to earn a [[Doctor of Philosophy|doctoral degree]] in physics at the [[University of Vienna]].<ref name="wapost"/>
==Scientific career==
In 1917, she and chemist [[Otto Hahn]] discovered the first long-lived [[isotope]] of the element [[protactinium]]. That year, Meitner was given her own physics section at the [[Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry]].<ref name="wapost"/> In 1923, she discovered the cause, known as the [[Auger electron spectroscopy|Auger effect]], of the emission from surfaces of electrons with 'signature' energies. The effect is named for [[Pierre Victor Auger]], a French scientist who independently discovered the effect in 1925.
In 1930, Meitner taught a seminar on nuclear physics and chemistry with [[Leó Szilárd]].
With the discovery of the [[neutron]] in the early 1930s, speculation arose in the scientific community that it might be possible to create elements heavier than [[uranium]] (atomic number 92) in the laboratory. A scientific race began between [[Ernest Rutherford]] in Britain, [[Irene Joliot-Curie]] in France, [[Enrico Fermi]] in Italy, and the Meitner-Hahn team in Berlin. At the time, all concerned believed that this was abstract research for the probable honor of a Nobel prize. None suspected that this research would culminate in nuclear weapons.
When [[Adolf Hitler]] came to power in 1933, Meitner was acting director of the Institute for Chemistry. Although she was protected by her Austrian citizenship, all other Jewish scientists, including her nephew [[Otto Frisch]], [[Fritz Haber]], [[Leó Szilárd]] and many other eminent figures, were dismissed or forced to resign from their posts – most of them emigrating. Her response was to say nothing and bury herself in her work. In 1946 she acknowledged that "It was not only stupid but also very wrong that I did not leave at once."<ref>Cornwell, ''Hitler's Scientists'', 207-13</ref>
[[Image:Hahnmeitnerstrassmann.jpg|thumb|right|Nuclear fission experimental setup, reconstructed at the Deutsches Museum, Munich.]]
After the [[Anschluss]], her situation became desperate. In July 1938, Meitner, with help from the [[Netherlands|Dutch]] physicists [[Dirk Coster|Coster]] and Fokker, escaped to Holland. She was forced to travel under cover to the Dutch border, where Coster persuaded German immigration officers that she had permission to travel to the Netherlands. She reached safety, though without her possessions. Meitner later said that she left Germany forever with 10 marks in her purse. Before she left, Otto Hahn had given her a [[diamond]] ring he had inherited from his mother: this was to be used to bribe the frontier guards if required. It was not required, and Meitner's nephew's wife later wore it. Meitner was lucky to escape, as Kurt Hess, a chemist who was an avid Nazi, had informed the authorities that she was about to flee. However, unknown friends only checked after they knew she was safe. An appointment at [[Groningen University]] did not come through, and she went instead to [[Stockholm]], where she took up a post at [[Manne Siegbahn]]'s laboratory, despite the difficulty caused by Siegbahn's prejudice against women in science. Here she established a working relationship with [[Niels Bohr]], who travelled regularly between [[Copenhagen]] and Stockholm. She continued to correspond with Hahn and other German scientists.<ref>Cornwell, ''Hitler's Scientists'', 214-15</ref>
Hahn and Meitner met clandestinely in [[Copenhagen]] in November to plan a new round of experiments; in this regard they subsequently exchanged a series of letters. Hahn then performed the difficult experiments which isolated the evidence for nuclear fission at his laboratory in Berlin. The surviving correspondence shows that Hahn recognized that fission was the only explanation for the barium, but, baffled by this remarkable conclusion, he wrote to Meitner. The possibility that uranium nuclei might break up under neutron bombardment had been suggested years before, notably by [[Ida Noddack]] in 1934. However, by employing the existing "liquid-drop" model of the nucleus,<ref name=Rhodes257to60>Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), Simon&Shuster, NY, NY pp.257–60</ref> Meitner and Frisch were the first to articulate a theory of how the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts: uranium nuclei had split to form [[barium]] and [[krypton]], accompanied by the ejection of several neutrons and a large amount of energy (the latter two products accounting for the loss in mass). She and Frisch had discovered the reason that no stable elements beyond uranium (in atomic number) existed naturally; the electrical repulsion of so many protons overcame the "strong" nuclear force.<ref name=Rhodes257to60/> Meitner also first realized that Einstein's famous equation, E = mc<sup>2</sup>, explained the source of the tremendous releases of energy seen in atomic decay, by the conversion of the mass-defect into energy.<ref name=Rhodes257to60/>
A letter from Bohr, commenting on the fact that the amount of energy released when he bombarded uranium atoms was far larger than had been predicted by calculations based on a non-fissile core, had sparked the above inspiration in December 1938. Hahn claimed that his chemistry had been solely responsible for the discovery, although he had been unable to explain the results.
It was politically impossible for the exiled Meitner to publish jointly with Hahn in 1939. [[Otto Hahn]] and [[Fritz Strassmann]] had sent the manuscript of their paper to ''[[Die Naturwissenschaften|Naturwissenschaften]]'' in December 1938, reporting they had detected the element [[barium]] after bombarding [[uranium]] with [[neutrons]];<ref> O. Hahn and F. Strassmann ''Über den Nachweis und das Verhalten der bei der Bestrahlung des Urans mittels Neutronen entstehenden Erdalkalimetalle'' (''On the detection and characteristics of the alkaline earth metals formed by irradiation of uranium with neutrons''), ''Naturwissenschaften'' Volume 27, Number 1, 11-15 (1939). The authors were identified as being at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, Berlin-Dahlem. Received [[22 December]] [[1938]].</ref> simultaneously, they had communicated their results to Meitner in a letter. Meitner, and her nephew [[Otto Robert Frisch]], correctly interpreted their results as being [[nuclear fission]].<ref>Lise Meitner and O. R. Frisch ''Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction'', ''Nature'', Volume 143, Number 3615, 239-240 [http://www.nature.com/physics/looking-back/meitner/index.html (11 February 1939)]. The paper is dated [[16 January]] [[1939]]. Meitner is identified as being at the Physical Institute, Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Frisch is identified as being at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Copenhagen. </ref> Frisch confirmed this experimentally on [[13 January]] [[1939]].<ref> O. R. Frisch ''Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment'', ''Nature'', Volume 143, Number 3616, 276-276 [http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Frisch-Fission-1939.html (18 February 1939)]. The paper is dated [[17 January]] [[1939]]. [The experiment for this letter to the editor was conducted on [[13 January]] [[1939]]; see Richard Rhodes ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' 263 and 268 (Simon and Schuster, 1986).]</ref>
Meitner recognized the possibility for a [[nuclear chain reaction|chain reaction]] of enormous explosive potential. This report had an electrifying effect on the scientific community. Because this could be used as a weapon, and since the knowledge was in German hands, Leó Szilárd, [[Edward Teller]], and [[Eugene Wigner]] together jumped into action, persuading Albert Einstein, who had the celebrity, to write President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] a warning letter; this led directly to the establishment of the [[Manhattan Project]]. Meitner refused an offer to work on the project at [[Los Alamos, New Mexico|Los Alamos]], declaring "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!"<ref>Ruth Lewin Sime, ''Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics'' (University of California Press, 1996), 305</ref>
Einstein himself respected Meitner and called her "our [[Marie Curie]]."<ref name="wapost"/>
==Awards and honours==
[[Image:Lise Meitner.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Lise Meitner ca. 1928.]]
In 1944, Hahn received the [[Nobel Prize for Chemistry]] for the discovery of nuclear fission. Some historians who have documented the history of the discovery of nuclear fission believe Meitner should have been awarded the Nobel Prize with Hahn.<ref> Ruth Lewin Sime ''From Exceptional Prominence to Prominent Exception: Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry'' [http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/KWG/Ergebnisse/Ergebnisse24.pdf Ergebnisse 24] Forschungsprogramm ''Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus'' (2005).</ref><ref> Ruth Lewin Sime ''Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics'' (University of California, 1997).</ref><ref> Elisabeth Crawford, Ruth Lewin Sime, and Mark Walker ''A Nobel Tale of Postwar Injustice'', ''Physics Today'' Volume 50, Issue 9, 26-32 (1997).</ref> In 1966 Hahn, [[Fritz Strassmann]] and Meitner together were awarded the [[Enrico Fermi Award]]. On a visit to the USA in 1946 she received American press celebrity treatment as someone who had "left Germany with the bomb in my purse." She was honoured as "Woman of the Year" by the National Women's Press Club (USA) in 1946, and received the [[Max Planck]] Medal of the German Physics Society in 1949. Meitner was suggested to receive the prize three times. An even rarer honour was given to her in 1997 with naming element 109 [[meitnerium]] in her honour.<ref name="wapost"/><ref name="hahn-nobel-lecture">{{cite web | title = From the natural transmutations of uranium to its artificial fission. Nobel Lecture. | author = Hahn, Otto | date = [[1946-12-13]] | url = http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1944/hahn-lecture.pdf#search='meitner' | publisher = ''Nobel Foundation'' | accessdate = 2007-09-24 }}</ref><ref name="otto-hahn-prophysik">{{cite web | title = Otto Hahn – Entdecker der Kernspaltung. (de) | author = Hardy, Anne | date = [[2004-03-04]] | url = http://www.pro-physik.de/Phy/leadArticle.do?laid=4049 | publisher = ''Pry Physik'', Wiley Interscience GmbH | accessdate = 2007-09-24 }}</ref>
==Later years==
After the war, Meitner, while acknowledging her own moral failing in staying in Germany from 1933 to 1938, was bitterly critical of Hahn and other German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazis and done nothing to protest against the crimes of Hitler's regime. Referring to the leading German scientist [[Werner Heisenberg]], she said: "Heisenberg and many millions with him should be forced to see these camps and the martyred people." She wrote to Hahn:
[[Image:Lise Meitner Grave.jpg|thumb|right|Meitner's Grave in Bramley]]
:"You all worked for Nazi Germany. And you tried to offer only a passive resistance. Certainly, to buy off your conscience you helped here and there a persecuted person, but millions of innocent human beings were allowed to be murdered without any kind of protest being uttered ... [it is said that] first you betrayed your friends, then your children in that you let them stake their lives on a criminal war – and finally that you betrayed Germany itself, because when the war was already quite hopeless, you did not once arm yourselves against the senseless destruction of Germany."<ref>Cornwell, ''Hitler's Scientists'', 411</ref>
Meitner became a Swedish citizen in 1949, but moved to [[United Kingdom|Britain]] in 1960 and died in [[Cambridge]] in 1968, shortly before her 90th birthday.<ref name=nytobit/> As was her wish, she was buried in the village of [[Bramley, Hampshire|Bramley]] in [[Hampshire]], at St. James parish church, close to her younger brother Walter, who had died in 1964. Her nephew [[Otto Robert Frisch]] composed the inscription on her headstone. It reads "Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity."
<br clear="all" />
==Popular Culture==
Besides the element named in her honor, there have been other mentions in popular culture:
* In episode S01E09 of [[Eureka (TV series)|Eureka]], the high school holds an annual dance that honors Lise Meitner, and says that Eureka strives to follow her ideals.
==Further reading==
* {{cite book | first = Otto Robert (ed.) | last = Frisch | year = 1959 | title = Trends in Atomic Physics: Essays Dedicated to Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Max von Laue on the Occasion of their 80th Birthday | publisher = Interscience | location = New York}}
* {{cite book | first = Dietrich (ed.) | last = Hahn | year = 2005 | title = [http://www.dav-buchhandlung.de/buchlang.php3?titel_id=54722 Lise Meitner: Erinnerungen an Otto Hahn] | publisher = S. Hirzel | location = Stuttgart | id = ISBN 978-3-7776-1380-2}}
* {{cite book | first = Patricia | last = Rife | year = 1999 | title = Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age | publisher = Birkhäuser}}
* Sime, Ruth Lewin (2006) "Lise Meitner" in [http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521821971 ''OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics''], Nina Byers and Gary Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press.
* {{cite book | first = Ruth Lewin| last = Sime | year = 1996 | title = Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley | id = ISBN 0-520-08906-5}}
*Sime, Ruth Lewin ''From Exceptional Prominence to Prominent Exception: Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry'' [http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/KWG/Ergebnisse/Ergebnisse24.pdf Ergebnisse 24] Forschungsprogramm ''Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus'' (2005).
* {{cite book | first = Lisa | last = Yount | year = 1996 | title = Twentieth Century Women Scientists | publisher = Facts on File | location = New York | id = ISBN 0-8160-3173-8}}
==See also==
*[[List of Austrian scientists]]
*[[Meitnerium]]
*[[Hans-Hermann Hupfeld]]
==References==
{{reflist|2}}
==External links==
* "Lise Meitner" in [http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Meitner,_Lise@844904033.html CWP at UCLA]
{{commons|Lise Meitner}}
*[http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/13/3/1 A critical review of Patricia Rife's book from PhysicsWeb]
*[http://www.users.bigpond.com/Sinclair/fission/LiseMeitner.html Lise Meitner Online]
*[http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people/Meitner,+Lise Annotated bibliography for Lise Meitner from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues]
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[[Category:People from Vienna]]
[[Category:Austrian physicists]]
[[Category:Nuclear physicists]]
[[Category:Women physicists]]
[[Category:Discoverers of chemical elements]]
[[Category:Enrico Fermi Award recipients]]
[[Category:Austrian Jews]]
[[Category:Jewish scientists]]
[[Category:Swedish Lutherans]]
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