In November 1878, Elise Meitner was born to a Jewish family in Vienna. Her father was one of the first Jewish lawyers to practice in Austria. She was born into a large family who valued education and encouraged the children to think for themselves; for example, her two sisters converted to Catholicism and Elise herself converted to Lutheranism Christianity, changing her name to Lise.
As a child, Lise found herself drawn to mathematics and science, particularly the science of light and optics, but had to leave school in 1892 at the age of 14. In Vienna, women were not allowed to attend schools of higher education until 1897, when Lise was 19 years old. She initially trained as a French teacher, because teaching was the only career path open to women in Vienna at the time. As soon as she was able, to resumed her study of physics, and squeezed the missing eight years of education into just two.
She went to university to study physics, and four years later earned her doctorate for examining Maxwell’s Equations in more detail. Lise was only the second women ever to be awarded a doctoral degree from the University of Vienna.
On one occasion, Lise was asked to investigate an optical phenomenon that Lord Rayleigh could not explain. Lord Rayleigh was a world renowned physicist and mathematician at the time and the President of the Royal Society. Lise found an explanation for the phenomenon, and used that explanation to make further predictions, which she then experimentally verified. Due to her exceptional progress in this area, she was shown problems with a new field of physics; radioactivity.
Whilst experimenting with alpha radiation, she discovered that a beam of alpha particles scattered more when a metal foil consisted of atoms with larger atomic mass. It was this work that inspired Ernest Rutherford to predict the nuclear model of the atom and devise an experiment to disprove the plumb pudding model proposed by JJ Thomson.
Lise’s father paid for her to attend the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. There, she made such a positive impression on Max Planck, that he relaxed his prejudices against women in higher education and invited her to attend his lectures. In Berlin, Lise met with many famous and influential physicists, and moved from laboratory to laboratory whilst progressing in her career.
Just before the start of the First World War, Lise trained to be an X-ray technician (which was a new technology at the time) whilst investigating why beta radiation was emitted with a spectrum of energies, but alpha radiation was not. In 1915 she joined the Austrian Army as an X-ray nurse-technician. She served on the Eastern front in Poland and later on the Italian front.
She left the army in 1916 and returned to her work as a physicist, becoming the head of her own physics section. She led the discovery of various decay chains of uranium, conducting chemistry experiments on the isotopes produced in the decay chain to determine what they were and where they fit onto the periodic table. It was Lise who discovered and named Protactinium. In 1921, Lise discovered Auger electrons (which were named after Pierre Auger who discovered it independently in 1923).
Lise took the first images of positrons produced from high energy gamma radiation in a cloud chamber. She also discovered that the law of conservation of energy did not appear to be true for beta decay, but this did not sit well with her. Later, the neutrino was discovered to solve this problem.
Lise had to escape Germany at the start of the Second World War, so she moved to Sweden. The list of discoveries she made and her contributions to the fields of nuclear and particle physics is vast; she was essentially in the middle of every major discovery in those fields for over three decades. She was nominated for Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry 48 times, but was never awarded one. Otto Hahn, who Lise had worked with many times, received the Nobel Prize in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission, but it was Lise who had told Otto Hahn that it was possible for the nucleus of uranium to split and her contributions made the discovery possible.
“I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”
Lise Meitner was almost always supportive of Otto Hahn’s work, but she did criticise him bitterly for not leaving Germany when the Nazi regime came to power, and not doing more to disrupt the Nazi war effort. She also expressed deep regret that the atomic bomb was developed, having declined to join the Manhattan Project (which developed the American atomic bomb) saying “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”
Paradoxically, Lise’s exclusion from the Nobel Prize helped her career, with academics so outraged by the decision that they offered her promoted positions within their institutions. Lise continued to make a strong contribution to the development of the nuclear shell model, and remained close friends with Otto Hahn throughout her life, visiting him often.
In October 1968, at age 89, Lise died due to ill health. A few months earlier, Otto Hahn had died, and her family decided not to tell her because they felt it would be too much for her to cope with. Lise’s grave stone reads: “Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity”.
“Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity”
I believe Lise Meitner’s contributions shaped our understanding of the atom more than any other physicist in history. Her meticulous attention to detail, and mastery of both the theoretical and practical aspects of physics meant she was able to work through problems that defeated others. Overlooked many times for honours and awards for political reasons or prejudice, she did not let it affect her work, or her relationship with colleagues. She was able to put personal differences aside to work professionally with colleagues, whether they were opposed to women in academia, or worked for an evil and oppressive regime. Her first duty was to science. From a supportive and encouraging childhood, she grew into one of the most remarkable physicists of the 20th Century, whilst keeping her moral integrity intact.
Physics with Keith 
