Lise Meitner - 'A physicist who never lost her humanity'

I had just finished teaching my Year 13 class the content for their A Level paper ‘The quest for political stability: Germany, 1871-1991’. One of the key issues that students are asked to consider is the importance of the role of key individuals in shaping this period of German history. To begin a discussion of the issue, I asked the class to make a list of the key individuals we had encountered when studying the topic. I wrote their contributions on the whiteboard: Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Stresemann, Hindenburg, Hitler, Adenauer et al. I looked at the list and sighed. One of my perceptive students identified the source of my despondency immediately. “They’re all men, aren’t they?!” Rosa Luxemburg and Sophie Scholl were hastily added to the list as some form of redress, but their inclusion felt artificial, a mere afterthought. Disconcertingly, both women had their lives cut brutally short in attempting to achieve the change of political regime they desired. 

Proponents of the Sonderweg theory would argue that the preponderance of domineering, largely authoritarian male leaders in our list is a peculiarity of German history. The merits of this interpretation aside, it can often feel that the study of history more broadly focuses disproportionately on the actions of so-called great [usually white] men. As a woman, an educator, a mother, it concerns me that girls and children of colour may not see themselves reflected in the stories of the past, or perhaps even worse, see themselves merely as victims or supporting cast members to the heroes of the tale. Gender and racial stereotypes are damaging. According to the charitable organisation You be You, by the age of 6, girls already believe that they are less intelligent than boys and from the age of 7 children start to limit their career ambitions according to gender, class and race. This is what inspires me to write a blog drawing attention to the achievements of individuals who have not always received the same attention as their white, male contemporaries. We all need positive role models to inspire us to raise our aspirations and dream big. 

I can’t deny that I was dejected that there should be such a paucity of women in a list of key individuals who shaped a nation’s history over the course of 120 years. But I take comfort in the knowledge that in the mature democracy of modern-day Germany it is a formidable woman who calls the shots. It is not Angela Merkel who is the subject of my first blog post however, but rather fittingly another physics graduate and research scientist, Lise Meitner.  

Lise Meitner was born in Vienna on November 7, 1878 to middle-class, non-practising Jewish parents and was the third of eight children. Her supportive parents nurtured her early talent for science and mathematics, paying for private tuition since formal schooling for girls ended at 14 in Austria at that time. She matriculated at the University of Vienna in October 1901 and five years later became only the second woman to gain a doctorate at the institution. In 1907 Lise moved to Berlin, where the famous physicist Max Planck allowed her to attend his lectures, having previously rejected any women wanting to do so. Lise became Planck's assistant the following year and also started working with Otto Hahn to discover isotopes.

Despite her evident brilliance as a scientist, Lise faced ongoing sexual discrimination throughout her career. It was not until the age of 35, when she got a permanent position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1913, that Lise was first paid a salary. In addition, Lise wasn’t allowed in Otto Hahn’s main laboratory. Instead she was forced to work in a converted basement carpentry workshop with a separate entrance. But Lise didn’t allow this to stop her. In 1917 she and Hahn discovered the isotope of protactinium. She finally received some recognition, being awarded the Leibniz Medal by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. However, when she discovered the radiationless transition in 1923, Lise wasn’t credited for the finding. It is called the Auger effect because Pierre Victor Auger, a French scientist, discovered it two years later. 

In 1926 Lise began her research on nuclear fission and became the first woman to teach as a full physics professor at the University of Berlin. This was during the so-called ‘golden age’ of the Weimar Republic, when increasing numbers of women entered the professions. However, things became more difficult when Hitler came to power in 1933, and when he annexed Austria in 1938, Meitner was forced to flee Nazi Germany, leaving behind all her possessions. Although she was a practising Protestant, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified defined themselves as such. With the help of Hahn, Lise escaped via the Netherlands to Sweden. 

In exile, Lise worked in Manne Siegbahn’s laboratory in Stockholm, where Ruth Lewin Sime has argued that she once again faced prejudice on account of being a woman. Although not relegated to a basement this time, being given her own laboratory space, Lise was denied access to resources and support. Fortunately, she was able to remain in contact with Hahn via letter, and according to Sime, met him secretly in Copenhagen on November 13, 1938. He informed her of a perplexing development in the research she had initiated: the observation of uranium nuclei breaking up into smaller parts. Whilst it was Hahn who therefore isolated the evidence for nuclear fission, it was Lise, teaming up with her nephew Otto Frisch, that coined the term and explained how the process worked in a paper that was published in the journal Nature on February 11, 1939.

The publication of this paper alarmed many eminent physicists and Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt warning him of the huge destructive potential of nuclear fission. Lise turned down an offer to work on the Manhattan project, which was initiated in order to develop an atom bomb before Nazi Germany could. She was greatly saddened by the use of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 and despite having nothing directly to do with it, was dubbed "the mother of the atomic bomb". Despite this unwelcome title, Lise received little recognition for her revolutionary research. Once the Second World War was over, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the delayed 1944 Nobel Prize for chemistry had been awarded for the discovery of nuclear fission – but to Hahn only, not to Lise.

Lise never returned to Germany, but continued to carry out research in Sweden, until her retirement at the age of 79. She moved to the UK in 1960, where many of her family had gone. Although snubbed by the Nobel committee in 1945, Lise received the U.S. Enrico Fermi Award jointly with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann for their discovery of fission in 1966. She also received many posthumous honours, including the naming of chemical element 109 meitnerium in 1997. Lise died in 1968 at the age of 89, and is buried in the grounds of the parish church in Bramley, Hampshire. Her tombstone bears the inscription “A physicist who never lost her humanity.”

Fast forward to the present day and still only 13% of the STEM workforce is female. The sexism women encounter is more insidious than the overt discrimination Lise faced. But her perseverance in the face of adversity makes her a wonderful role model for young girls thinking of a career in science or engineering today. When I was little I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. I wanted to make a famous discovery like the three scientists did in my book on Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur. I’m not sure what happened to that little girl but I know that by the time I came to choose my A Levels I had decided not to continue studying any of the sciences. I wonder if things might have been different if I had learned about female scientists like Lise and the amazing discoveries made by women. 

Bibliography

Atomic Heritage Foundation. 2020. Lise Meitner. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/lise-meitner. [Accessed 13 August 2020]

Britannica. 2020. Lise Meitner. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lise-Meitner. [Accessed 13 August 2020].

Live Science. 2020. Lise Meitner: Life, Findings and Legacy. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.livescience.com/62162-lise-meitner-biography.html. [Accessed 13 August 2020].

New Scientist. 2020. Lise Meitner. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/people/lise-meitner/#ixzz6SS5RDGmihttps://www.livescience.com/62162-lise-meitner-biography.html. [Accessed 13 August 2020].

You Be You. 2020. Our Work. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youbeyou.co.uk/projects. [Accessed 13 August 2020].