Lise Meitner

Towards the end of her life, Lise suffered from atherosclerosis which deteriorated her mental condition and in 1964 during a trip to the US she had a heart attack, which caused further complications.

Nursing a broken hip and several minor heart attacks, this eminent physicist breathed her last on 27 October, 1968 and she was interred in Hampshire.

In 1997, the element 109 on the periodic table was named after this pioneering scientist, as meitnerium. She is also the eponym for the educational institute ‘Hahn–Meitner-Institut’ and several astronomical structures which include craters on the planet Venus and earth’s moon.

Lise Meitner was born in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna on 7 November 1878. Her family were believers of the Jewish faith and she had two elder and five younger siblings.

Her father Philipp Meitner was a distinguished lawyer in the city and had a well-established practice. The family was considered among the wealthiest in their neighbourhood.

After completing high school in 1901, she pursued higher studies from the ‘University of Vienna’ and her thesis for doctoral studies dealt with the subject of "heat conduction in an inhomogeneous body". She successfully completed her PhD and the university awarded her a degree in physics, in 1905.

After her doctoral studies she moved to Berlin and there she collaborated with chemist Otto Hahn. The duo embarked on study of radioactivity and discovered a new element, which was named protactinium, in the year 1918.

This genius mind then discovered the phenomenon of radiationless transition which occurs when an electron from higher energy level fills in the vacuum created by a core electron leaving the atom leading to liberation of energy. The transfer of energy can occur in the form of another electron leaving the same atom. This phenomenon where a secondary electron is released from the atom is named as the ‘Auger Effect’.

Though she discovered the phenomenon in 1923, it was named after another scientist Pierre Victor Auger who arrived at these conclusions about two years later. It was one of the many instances where Lise had to suffer the consequences of being a woman.

She was then offered a position of professor, at the ‘University of Berlin’ in 1926. Her appointment as the head of the physics department of the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry’, earned her the distinction of becoming the first woman professor in Germany.

At Berlin, she continued her association with Hahn and the duo started the ‘transuranium research program’ in 1935. After Austria’s annexation, three years later, she moved to Sweden in order to escape from German oppression.

Lise Meitner worked with Otto Hahn in the team which discovered and successfully explained the phenomenon of nuclear fission. Though it was Meitner who deduced the most probable explanation of the phenomenon, she wasn’t nominated for the Nobel Prize.