Lise Meitner was an Austrian-born nuclear physicist who made seminal contributions to the field of atomic science in the early 20th century. Born on November 7, 1878, in Vienna, Austria, she overcame significant gender barriers to become only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1906. She moved to Berlin in 1907 to study with Max Planck and began her transformative thirty-year collaboration with chemist Otto Hahn in Berlin in 1907; they both moved their research to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in 1912. During this period, she became the first woman to hold a full professorship in physics in Germany, establishing herself as a pioneering woman in science. Her early research with Hahn led to the discovery of the element protactinium in 1918 and significant work on radioactivity and nuclear isomerism.
Meitner's most groundbreaking contribution came in 1938-1939 when she provided the correct physical interpretation of experimental results showing barium formation from neutron bombardment of uranium. Forced to flee Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage, she continued her scientific collaboration with Hahn while in exile in Sweden. During a pivotal Christmas holiday meeting with her nephew Otto Frisch in 1938, she realized the uranium nucleus had split into two, a process they named nuclear fission in their landmark February 1939 Nature publication. This revolutionary insight explained the enormous energy release observed in the experiments and provided the theoretical foundation for nuclear energy applications. Her interpretation of the physics behind the fission process was instrumental in advancing nuclear physics and understanding the fundamental forces within the atomic nucleus.
Despite her crucial role in the discovery, Meitner was excluded from the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded solely to Otto Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission, a decision widely regarded as one of the Nobel Committee's most significant omissions. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times across both Physics and Chemistry categories but never received the honor, though her integrity was recognized through her refusal to work on the Manhattan Project, declaring I will have nothing to do with a bomb. She eventually received significant recognition with the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award shared with Hahn and Strassmann. Meitner's story represents both the triumph of scientific discovery and the challenges faced by women and minorities in science, as her contributions were often overshadowed by her male collaborators. Her epitaph, written by her nephew Otto Frisch, perfectly captures her legacy: Lise Meitner a physicist who never lost her humanity.
