Lise Meitner

Meitner, Lise 

Born Nov. 7, 1878, in Vienna; died Oct. 27, 1968, in Cambridge. Austrian physicist.

Meitner was educated at the University of Vienna, where she received her Ph. D. degree in 1906. Beginning in 1907 she conducted scientific studies (as a guest) at the laboratory of O. Hahn in Berlin. From 1912 to 1915 she was an assistant at the Institute of Theoretical Physics. From 1917 to 1938 she was head of the physics section at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry at Dahlem. From 1922 she taught at the University of Berlin, where she was appointed a professor in 1926. In 1938 she emigrated to Sweden, becoming a colleague at the Nobel Institute; in 1947 she was appointed a professor at the Higher Technical School in Stockholm. After her retirement in 1960, she lived in Great Britain.

Meitner’s principal works were in nuclear physics. Together with Hahn, she developed a method of separating alpha decay products (1909) and established the presence of monochromatic groups in the spectra of beta rays (1911), showing that they are the result of the internal conversion of gamma rays. She and Hahn also discovered the radioactive element protactinium (1918). Between 1922 and 1924 she developed the concepts of the discrete energy states of the nucleus. In the 1930’s she began studying the nuclear reactions that occur when uranium is bombarded with neutrons. In 1939, together with O. Frisch, she gave a theoretical explanation of the experiments conducted by Hahn and F. Strassmann that revealed the presence of barium in the nuclear decay products of uranium.

REFERENCE

Crawford, D. Lise Meitner, Atomic Pioneer. New York, 1969.