I Love Science
In honor of International Woman's Day, I thought it fitting to recognize a female scientist.
Lise Meitner
![]()
When Lise Meitner finished school at age 14, she was barred from higher education - as were all girls in Austria. Inspired by the discoveries of William Röntgen and Henri Becquerel, she was determined to study radioactivity.
When she turned 21, women were finally allowed into Austrian universities. Two years of tutoring preceded her enrollment at the University of Vienna; where she excelled in math and physics and earned her doctorate in 1906.
She went to Berlin and collaborated with Otto Hahn on the study of radioactive elements. As an Austrian Jewish woman, however, she was excluded from the main labs and lectures and allowed to work only in the basement.
In 1912, the pair moved to a new university and Meitner had better lab facilities. Though their partnership was split up physically when she was forced to flee NaziGermany in 1938, they continued to collaborate.
Meitner continued her work in Sweden and, after Hahn discovered that uranium atoms were split when bombarded with neutrons, she calculated the energy released in the reaction and named the phenomenon “nuclear fission.”
The discovery won Hahn the Nobel Prize in 1944. Meitner, however, was overlooked by the Nobel committee. She refused to return to Germany after the war and continued her atomic research in Stockholm into her 80s.
Lise Meitner
When Lise Meitner finished school at age 14, she was barred from higher education - as were all girls in Austria. Inspired by the discoveries of William Röntgen and Henri Becquerel, she was determined to study radioactivity.
When she turned 21, women were finally allowed into Austrian universities. Two years of tutoring preceded her enrollment at the University of Vienna; where she excelled in math and physics and earned her doctorate in 1906.
She went to Berlin and collaborated with Otto Hahn on the study of radioactive elements. As an Austrian Jewish woman, however, she was excluded from the main labs and lectures and allowed to work only in the basement.
In 1912, the pair moved to a new university and Meitner had better lab facilities. Though their partnership was split up physically when she was forced to flee NaziGermany in 1938, they continued to collaborate.
Meitner continued her work in Sweden and, after Hahn discovered that uranium atoms were split when bombarded with neutrons, she calculated the energy released in the reaction and named the phenomenon “nuclear fission.”
The discovery won Hahn the Nobel Prize in 1944. Meitner, however, was overlooked by the Nobel committee. She refused to return to Germany after the war and continued her atomic research in Stockholm into her 80s.
