Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner
1878 — 1968
Autriche, Cisleithanie, Suède
Austro-Swedish physicist
Émotions disponibles (6)
Neutre
par défaut
Inspirée
Pensive
Surprise
Triste
Fière
Key Facts
Works & Achievements
In collaboration with Otto Hahn, Meitner isolates and identifies protactinium, a naturally radioactive element. This discovery is her first major recognized contribution to nuclear chemistry.
In exile in Sweden, Meitner provides the fundamental theoretical explanation of uranium fission: a nucleus bombarded by neutrons splits like an oscillating droplet, releasing colossal energy described by E=mc².
Article co-signed with her nephew Otto Frisch, it introduces the term 'fission' for the first time and sets out the complete theory of the phenomenon. It triggers a revolution in physics worldwide.
Meitner publishes dozens of articles on beta decay and gamma-ray spectra, establishing essential experimental foundations for modern nuclear physics.
After Hiroshima, Meitner actively engages in promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy through lectures, interviews, and articles, bringing an ethical voice to the scientific debate.
Anecdotes
Lise Meitner was the first woman to earn a doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna in 1906, in a country where women had only been allowed access to universities since 1897. Her doctoral supervisor, Ludwig Boltzmann, immediately recognized her exceptional genius.
When she arrived in Berlin to work with Otto Hahn, the chemist Emil Fischer barred her from the laboratories reserved for men. She had to work for years in a former carpentry workshop converted into a laboratory, without pay, and use a separate entrance. It was not until 1912 that she was finally admitted to the common spaces.
In December 1938, having taken refuge in Sweden after fleeing the Nazi regime, Meitner received a letter from her colleague Otto Hahn describing an inexplicable experiment: the uranium nucleus appeared to split in two. While walking in the snow with her nephew Otto Frisch, she found the complete theoretical explanation of nuclear fission, scribbling her calculations on scraps of paper.
In 1944, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Otto Hahn alone for the discovery of nuclear fission, with no mention of Meitner, who had nonetheless provided the fundamental theoretical explanation. She was described by Albert Einstein as the 'German Marie Curie', and received numerous belated distinctions, including element 109 of the periodic table named Meitnerium in her honor in 1997.
A deeply committed pacifist, Lise Meitner refused to take part in the Manhattan Project despite repeated invitations from the Americans. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, she publicly declared her horror and spent the rest of her life campaigning for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Primary Sources
We have thought seriously about your result on barium... It is possible that the uranium nucleus behaves like an oscillating water droplet that can split apart.
On the basis of present knowledge of the forces acting inside a nucleus, it seems possible to account for the formation of such a large nucleus in a simple way: the uranium nucleus might divide itself into two nuclei of roughly equal size.
Physics has given me the joy of my life. Science is not the result of a single mind, but of hundreds of minds working together across generations.
I did not want to build a bomb. I am a physicist, not a military person. The use of the atomic bomb on civilian populations is a moral catastrophe.
Key Places
Lise Meitner's birthplace, where she completed her higher education at the University of Vienna and earned her doctorate in 1906 under the supervision of Ludwig Boltzmann.
Meitner's main workplace for over thirty years. It was here that she and Hahn conducted their research on radioactivity and discovered protactinium in 1918.
A small Swedish coastal town where Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, during a walk in the snowy forest in December 1938, developed the theory of nuclear fission.
The institution that welcomed Meitner in exile from 1938. She worked there under difficult conditions, far from her Berlin colleagues, while continuing to develop her major theoretical work.
The city where Meitner settled in her final years, close to her nephew Frisch. She died there on 27 October 1968, a few days before her 90th birthday.
Typical Objects
Ionizing radiation detection instrument that Meitner used daily to analyze the radioactivity of elements. It was indispensable in her experiments on atomic nuclei.
Device used to make the trajectories of subatomic particles visible. Meitner used it to identify and analyze the emissions of the radioactive elements she studied.
Key tool in the neutron bombardment experiments on uranium conducted by Hahn and Meitner in the 1930s. It was through these bombardments that fission was experimentally observed.
Meitner kept rigorous scientific notes recording every experiment, measurement, and theoretical reflection. Her notebooks constitute a valuable primary source for the history of science.
Central tool in her daily work as a researcher, on which she identified protactinium and tracked nuclear transmutations. In her honor, element 109 bears her name today: Meitnerium.
In exile, Meitner maintained an intense correspondence with Hahn, Frisch, and other physicists. It was through letters that the theory of fission was developed, in December 1938.
School Curriculum
Daily Life
Morning
Meitner began her day early, often before her male colleagues, to avoid unwanted attention in a scientific environment still largely closed to women. She had a frugal breakfast — black tea, bread and jam — before walking to the laboratory.
Afternoon
Afternoons were entirely devoted to experiments and radioactivity measurements: calibrating instruments, reading counters, and meticulously annotating results in her notebooks. Theoretical discussions with Hahn often took place in the late afternoon around a blackboard.
Evening
In the evenings, Meitner read the latest scientific journals, replied to her voluminous correspondence with European physicists, or attended the scientific seminars for which Berlin was then the world capital. She also loved classical music and occasionally played the piano.
Food
Meitner led a simple and modest life, eating ordinary Berlin bourgeois meals: soups, braised meats, seasonal vegetables. During her years of exile in Sweden, she adapted to the more frugal Scandinavian cuisine, and devoted little time to meals, absorbed in her research.
Clothing
In the laboratory, Meitner always wore a white coat over a dark dress, high-collared and plain, in keeping with the bourgeois respectability norms of the time. She never distinguished herself by her appearance, preferring to go unnoticed in a man's world, but always remained neat and dignified.
Housing
In Berlin, Meitner lived in a modest bourgeois apartment near the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, filled with books and musical scores. After her exile in 1938, she lived in hotel rooms and temporary lodgings in Stockholm, an instability that weighed heavily on her productivity and morale.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Gallery
Gedenktafel Thielallee 63 (Dahl) Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner Denkmal Unter den Linden Berlin (3)
Gedenktafel Hessische Str 1 (Mitte) Otto Hahn Lise Meitner - copy 2.DSC00230
Gedenkstein Invalidenstr 110 (Mitte) Physiker
Gedenkstein Invalidenstr 110 (Mitte) Physiker2
Wuppertal Lise-Meitner-Str 0009
Lise Meitner (1878-1968), lecturing at Catholic University, Washington, D.C., 1946
Skulptur Unter den Linden 6 (Mitte) Lise Meitner
Frontansicht des Hauptgebäudes der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin
Gedenktafel Rudower Str 184 (Buck) Breakouts
Visual Style
Réalisme scientifique en teintes grises et ambrées : laboratoires berlinois aux instruments de laiton et de verre, contrastant avec les paysages enneigés de Suède. Esthétique photographique d'archive des années 1930.
AI Prompt
Scientific realism and early 20th century European aesthetic. Muted palette of steel grays, deep navy, and warm amber from incandescent laboratory lights. Images of early nuclear physics labs: glass tubes, brass instruments, photographic plates showing particle tracks. Contrast between the cold precision of Berlin scientific institutions and the stark white Scandinavian winter landscape. Period-accurate clothing: dark professional dresses, modest collars, round wire-frame spectacles. Occasional archival photography aesthetic — sepia tones, high grain, formal portrait lighting. Visual references to atomic diagrams and periodic table illustrations from the 1930s.
Sound Ambience
Ambiance de laboratoire feutré des années 1930 : tics du compteur Geiger, instruments électriques bourdonnants, plume sur papier ; puis la neige et les pins de Suède où naît la théorie de la fission.
AI Prompt
Quiet laboratory atmosphere from the 1920s and 1930s: the faint ticking and clicking of a Geiger counter detecting radioactive particles, the hum of early electrical instruments, glass equipment clinking softly, the scratch of a pen on paper as equations are written. Distant Berlin city sounds filtering through a window — trams on cobblestones, occasional church bells. In a later scene, the hushed crunch of snow underfoot in a Scandinavian winter forest, two people speaking in low voices, wind through pine trees.
Portrait Source
Wikimedia Commons
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Références
Ĺ’uvres
Découverte du protactinium (élément 91)
1918
Théorie de la fission nucléaire
décembre 1938
Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction (article Nature)
11 février 1939
Travaux sur la radioactivité bêta et les spectres d'émission
1908–1933
Conférences et articles pour un usage pacifique de l'énergie atomique
1945–1960
