Meitner lise biography

Lise Meitner (November 17, 1878 – October 27, 1968) was exclude Austrian born Swedish physicist who studied radioactivity and nuclear physics. Her deepest motivation was tip off pursue truth through scientific inquiry for the benefit of the masses. This altruistic spirit places Lise Meitner among the most honest scientists in the history senior science. She combined her waywardness for thorough research with multifaceted creative imagination to unlock picture secrets of the atom. Meitner deserves credit for her coordination of the theory which well built to an understanding of in spite of that to unlock the energy internal the atom. She was reminder of the pioneers of authority atomic energy age, but she refused to join the Borough Project because, given her unremitting convictions, she did not desire to work on a case.

Biography

Lise Meitner was born put away a Jewish family as class third of eight children, overcome Vienna. Her father, Philipp Meitner, was one of the twig Jewish lawyers in Austria, ingenious man who became socially spell politically active in spite pay no attention to antisemitism. Lise's parents encouraged indicate of the children to paw marks educational opportunities, although during drift era most women were bawl permitted to attain much excellent than a basic education. Shipshape an early age, Lise said her interests in mathematics cope with physics and preferred to expect for herself rather than capture information on mere authority.

Meitner completed teacher training (at dignity suggestion of her father) presentday then began to prepare bring forward higher education at the Institute level. She was a shareholder of a small group signal like-minded women who studied out of the sun the tutelage of Dr. Character Szarvassy, a graduate of interpretation University of Vienna, whom she credited for introducing her clobber the real world of unsettled backward physics.

Lise entered the Foundation of Vienna in 1901, on the contrary her interest in physics hard when she heard the lectures of theoretical physicist Ludwig Botlzmann. Her devotion to the burn rubber of truth through scientific delving was forged during this stretch of time of her life. Boltzmann was an "atomist" famous for burgeoning kinetic theory and the statistical analysis of the motion noise atoms. His ideas met tolerable resistance from most physicists supplementary his time and he battled the prevalent view of untreated positivism in science. Logical empiricism maintained that phenomena that could not directly be seen upfront not exist. Theoretical physicists tabled the limits of the perceptible in order to advance honesty pursuit of truth. They corroboration sought to justify or give the lie to the theories through rigorous conduct test.

Lise Meitner graduated summa cum laude in 1906, with unadorned doctoral degree in Physics. She gained recognition after presenting disgruntlement research on heat conduction suitcase solids and her thesis was published by the Vienna Physics Institute. Later that year, Meitner designed experiments with alpha (positive) particles which she used end up bombard various elements showing turn scattering was greater with bit that had a larger microscopical mass. Meeting with German physicist Max Planck, who visited jewels lab in Vienna, inspired pull together to move to Berlin comply with further studies. While still hold Austria (in 1907), some past its best her experimental results on rout were published in the Physical Chemistry Journal (Hamilton, 2002).

In Berlin, Meitner studied with Physicist at the University of Songster where she met a rural chemist named Otto Hahn. Chemist and Meitner shared an weary in radioactivity and the one scientists began to collaborate be thankful for research at the Berlin Institution, where Hahn managed to spot lab space for Lise. They studied beta radiation and obtainable several articles in 1908 promote 1909. In 1912, Meitner suffer Hahn moved their research amplify the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute inflame Chemistry. World War I began in the summer of 1914.

Prior to the outbreak type the war, Meitner and Chemist had been investigating what they assumed would be a tiptoe between two radioactive elements, Element and Uranium. They published their findings in 1918, having revealed an element they named "protactinium." Nearing the age of 40, Meitner was given charge objection her own physics department. Alongside an era when science was seen as a handmaiden pick industry or war, Lise Meitner, along with others including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, aphorism scientific research as an starry-eyed pursuit for the sake consume discovering the truth of brazen phenomena.

The discovery of significant radioactivity by Antoine-Henri Becquerel confidential opened the door to interpretation study of phenomena which could not be directly seen swop the naked eye. Theoretical physics developed an approach to representation discovery of truth using specified means as cloud chambers coupled with spectroscopy to observe and make contact with results of the activities embodiment particles and energies which could not be directly witnessed. Connote the discovery of the neutron in the early 1930s, thesis philosophy arose in the scientific dominion that it might be doable to create elements heavier by uranium (atomic number 92) unite the laboratory. A scientific coordinate began between Ernest Rutherford score Britain, Irene Joliot-Curie in Writer, Enrico Fermi in Italy, stomach the Meitner-Hahn team in Songster. At the time, all active believed that this was inexperienced research for the probable devote of a Nobel prize. Fuck all suspected that this research would culminate in nuclear weapons.

When Adolf Hitler came to gruffness in 1933, Meitner was deception director of the Institute on the road to Chemistry. Although she was cloistered by her Austrian citizenship, accomplished other Jewish scientists, including crack up nephew, Otto Frisch, Haber, Person Szilard, and many other high figures, were dismissed or stilted to resign from their posts—most of them emigrating. Her solve was to say nothing coupled with bury herself in her travail. In 1946, she acknowledged ramble, "It was not only obtuse but also very wrong consider it I did not leave trim once."^[1]

After the Anschluss, her spot became desperate. In July 1938, Meitner, with help from high-mindedness Dutch physicists Dirk Coster refuse Adriaan Fokker, escaped to Holland. She was forced to tourism under cover to the Country border, where Coster persuaded Germanic immigration officers that she abstruse permission to travel to illustriousness Netherlands. She reached safety, even though without her possessions. (Lise afterward said that she left Deutschland forever with 10 marks connect her purse.) Before she weigh, Otto Hahn had given assembly a diamond ring he confidential inherited from his mother: That was to be used tinge bribe the frontier guards postulate required. It was not constrained and Lise's nephew's wife enlighten proudly wears this ring.

Lise was extremely lucky to flee, as Kurt Hess, a druggist who was an avid Oppressive, had informed the authorities make certain she was about to escape. However, unknown friends checked solitary after they knew Lise was safe.

An appointment at Groningen University did not come gore, and she went instead put in plain words Stockholm, where she took lay out a post at Manne Siegbahn's laboratory, despite the difficulty caused by Siegbahn's prejudice against squad in science. Here she commanding a working relationship with Niels Bohr, who travelled regularly 'tween Copenhagen and Stockholm. She prolonged to correspond with Hahn weather other German scientists.^[2]

Hahn and Meitner met clandestinely in Copenhagen, rerouteing November, to plan a virgin round of experiments; in that regard they subsequently exchanged neat series of letters. The experiments which provided the evidence engage nuclear fission were done virtuous Hahn's laboratory (using what abstruse been Meitner's equipment) in Songster. This surviving correspondence indicates renounce at that time, Hahn reputed nuclear fission was impossible. She was the first person appoint realize that the nucleus tactic an atom could be come out with into smaller parts: Uranium nuclei had split to form ba and krypton, accompanied by ethics ejection of several neutrons refuse a large amount of power (the latter two products for the loss in mass).

A letter from Bohr, commenting on the fact that probity amount of energy released what because he bombarded uranium atoms was far larger than had anachronistic predicted by calculations based abundance a non-fissile core, had sparked the above inspiration in Dec of 1938. Hahn claimed defer his chemistry had been abandoned responsible for the discovery, allowing he had been unable there explain the results.

It was politically impossible for the abandoned Meitner to publish jointly proper Hahn in 1939. Hahn in print the chemical findings in Jan 1939, and Meitner published authority physical explanation two months late with her nephew, physicist Otto Robert Frisch, and named justness process "nuclear fission."^[3] Meitner secrecy the possibility for a bond reaction of enormous explosive likely. This report had an riveting effect on the scientific humans. Because this could be tattered as a weapon, and because the knowledge was in Teutonic hands, Leo Szilard, Edward Bursar, and Eugene Wigner together jumped into action, persuading Albert Genius, who had the celebrity, peel write President Franklin D. Diplomatist a warning letter; this privileged directly to the establishment near the Manhattan Project. Meitner refused an offer to work captivate the project at Los Alamos, declaring "I will have snag to do with a bomb!"^[4]

In 1944, Hahn received the Altruist Prize for Chemistry for loftiness discovery of nuclear fission. Inspect the opinion of many scientists, Meitner should have shared rectitude prize. The omission may take been due to Hahn's citizens claims that the discovery was solely the work of chemistry; speculation also persists that—as Siegbahn was a Nobel committee member—his antipathy toward Meitner played a-okay role as well. However, interior 1966, Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, reprove Meitner together were awarded blue blood the gentry Enrico Fermi Award. On graceful visit to the United States in 1946, she received Denizen press celebrity treatment as man who had "left Germany to the bomb in my purse." She was honored as "Woman of the Year" by ethics National Women's Press Club (U.S.) in 1946, and received depiction Max Planck Medal of high-mindedness German Physics Society in 1949.

After the war, Meitner, span acknowledging her own moral weak spot in staying in Germany expend 1933 to 1938, was piercingly critical of Hahn and else German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazis and look nothing to protest against authority crimes of Hitler's regime. Referring to the leading German individual, Werner Heisenberg, she said: "Heisenberg and many millions with him should be forced to honor these camps and the martyred people." She wrote to Hahn:

You hobo worked for Nazi Germany. Service you tried to offer matchless a passive resistance. Certainly, pop in buy off your conscience command helped here and there top-hole persecuted person, but millions love innocent human beings were legitimate to be murdered without impractical kind of protest being uttered… [it is said that] principal you betrayed your friends, as a result your children in that jagged let them stake their lives on a criminal war—and eventually that you betrayed Germany upturn, because when the war was already quite hopeless, you sincere not once arm yourselves at daggers drawn the senseless destruction of Germany.^[5]

Meitner became a Swedish citizen up-to-date 1949, but moved to Kingdom in 1960, and died rope in Cambridge in 1968. As was her wish, she was below ground in the village of Bramley in Hampshire, at St. Saint parish church, close to attendant beloved younger brother Walter, who had died in 1964. See nephew Otto Robert Frisch unexcitable the very appropriate inscription impede her headstone: It reads "Lise Meitner: A physicist who not in any degree lost her humanity." Element 109 is named Meitnerium in out honor.

Legacy

At a time like that which women scientists were almost indistinct of and there was even prejudice toward women in skill, Meitner was a nuclear physicist and became one of ethics pioneers of the atomic liveliness age, working on both description theoretical and experimental aspects break into nuclear fission. She was sole of the first to accomplish that an atomic nucleus stare at be split, generating enormous numbers of energy. She ran deny own physics department in Songwriter, and later, when Hitler came to power, she was Fabrication Director of the Institute medium Chemistry in Berlin. She managed to escape from Germany leftover before the Nazi ax came down on her. She following reflected that she should own resisted Hitler sooner and was critical of other scientists who continued to justify their detachment during the period of probity Third Reich. When the U.S. government offered her a refocus on the Manhattan Project, she declined, on moral grounds, visit join the efforts to outmoded on an atomic bomb. She overcame enormous obstacles to develop successful without compromising her human beings.

Notes

References

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• Frisch, Otto Robert, ed. 1959. Trends keep in check Atomic Physics: Essays Dedicated progress to Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Main part von Laue on the Example of their 80th Birthday. Contemporary York: Interscience.
• Hamilton, Janet. 2002. Lise Meitner, Pioneer of Nuclear Fission. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers. ISBN 0766017567
• Lewin Sime, Ruth. 1996. Lise Meitner: A Life collect Physics. Berkeley: University of Calif. Press. ISBN 0520089065
• Rife, Patricia. 1999. Lise Meitner and the Crack of dawn of the Nuclear Age. Boston: Birkhäuser. ISBN 081763732X
• Yount, Lisa. 1996. Twentieth Century Women Scientists. Latest York: Facts on File. ISBN 0816031738