MINT Heroine of the Month – Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner's life and work are a significant example of the challenges and achievements of women in science. Her contribution to physics has had a lasting impact on the scientific world.
Lise Meitner (born 1878 in Vienna) was an Austrian nuclear physicist.
She was one of the first women to study physics at the University of Vienna and received her doctorate in physics in 1906, the second woman to do so.
In 1907, a decades-long collaboration with the chemist Otto Hahn began in Berlin.
In 1938, Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch discovered the physical principle of nuclear fission, based on experiments by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.
Despite her crucial role in the discovery of nuclear fission, she was overlooked for the 1944 Nobel Prize, which was awarded solely to Otto Hahn.
Because of her Jewish origins, Meitner had to flee Nazi Germany in 1938. She emigrated to Sweden, where she worked at the Nobel Institute for Physics in Stockholm.
Lise Meitner received many honors and awards, including the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1966, and several schools and institutions were named after her.
The chemical element meitnerium (Mt), with atomic number 109, was named in her honor.
