Women of science / Lisa Meitner.

Lise Meitner was an Austrian physicist born in Vienna in November 1878 into a Jewish family that later converted to Christianity. It is mainly known because it discovered nuclear fission, so it is considered one of the most obvious examples of scientific findings made by women and overlooked by the Nobel committee. He began his university studies in 1901 after the Austrian government consented to women pursuing a degree in science and letters. The physicist Ludwig Boltzmann's classes started him in a world that fascinated her. By not discriminating against women and accepting their integration into their classes, Boltzmann forged a scientific community to which Lise joined. She was excited and impacted by the teacher's passion: her pretension to interpret natural phenomena and to predict phenomena that our senses did not detect. In 1907 he completed his doctorate.

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Lise Meitner was an Austrian physicist born in Vienna on November 17, 1878 in a Jewish family that later converted to Christianity. It is mainly known because it discovered nuclear fission, so it is considered one of the most obvious examples of scientific findings made by women and overlooked by the Nobel committee. He began his university studies in 1901 after the Austrian government consented to women pursuing a degree in science and letters. The physicist Ludwig Boltzmann's classes started him in a world that fascinated her. By not discriminating against women and accepting their integration into their classes, Boltzmann forged a scientific community to which Lise joined. She was excited and impacted by the teacher's passion: her pretension to interpret natural phenomena and to predict phenomena that our senses did not detect. In 1907 he completed his doctorate.

On July 28, 1914, the first of the wars Lise lived began. his simultaneous collaboration with the Lichterfelde hospital as an X-ray technique and the maintenance of the laboratory in which, alone because he had no personnel, he continued his research on uranium. In 1917 he obtained the creation of the Meitner Laboratory and perfected Otto Hahn's sample preparation technique. In 1918 they jointly sent an article on the discovery of the proactinium in which Hahn appears as the principal investigator. This situation was admitted by Meitner as a formula of thanks to Hahn and as a way to compensate for the loss of years of investigation due to his stay on the war front.

1932 and 1933 were miraculous years for physics. The discovery of the neutron by Chadwick made it possible to understand the particles that inhabited the nucleus. For its part, thanks to the development of new techniques, Meitner at this time first detected a positron (the antiparticle of the electron, which has the same mass but opposite charge) and advanced in the understanding of beta and gamma spectrum and alpha particles long range.

As part of their discoveries Lise and his nephew Otto Robert Frisch (resident of Copenhagen) in 1939 were the first to articulate and justify the first nuclear fission (the breaking of a heavy atom into less heavy and more stable ones) with the law of increase of the mass of Einstein and in which Meitner recognized that when bombarding uranium with neutrons there was the possibility of a chain reaction of enormous explosive potential. His report had a great effect on the scientific community, because this knowledge could be used in a bomb, since it was in German hands in the middle of world war. This article was published in Nature and launched all American scientists. Although Lise was annoyed by her exclusion in the experimental publication, she maintained her relationship with Otto and answered very kindly to all her doubts, which were no longer merely academic because in this same year Hahn secretly became part of a military section and it was when Germany was launched to the conquest of Europe and in 1940 had already occupied France, Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Norway.

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In 1942 he was offered to participate in an international research group to get an atomic bomb and end the Nazi regime. Although it would have been an opportunity to move from Sweden to the USA, leaving that laboratory that did not love her and working hand in hand with the great brains of the time, did not accept. He left his reasons very clear: he did not want anything to do with a bomb. No other scientist refused the offer.

At the end of 1944 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Otto Hahn. No one understood why, having been nominated together in 1939, it was now granted only to him. The only explanation was the affiliation to the committee of Siegbahn, the director of his laboratory, who once again scientifically made life impossible for Lise, although it was never known whether by professional jealousy or macho prejudices. It was a difficult time for Hahn to travel to Sweden and it was requested that the award be postponed.

In 1946 Meitner traveled to the USA to see his family and was received with all the honors. Named the woman of the year, the award was given by President Truman. It was unleashed such a furor that he got a proposal from Hollywood for a movie, which she did not accept because "there was no sense in what was told there".

In 1947 Otto Hahn received the Nobel and did not mention at all the 30 years of collaboration he spent with Lise. This was a hard blow for Lise, and she distanced the two scientists forever. Lise was then aware that she could never return to Germany because she felt unable to recognize the country that was once her home. At the end of the war, neither her former colleagues tried to talk to her or suggest that she return, despite knowing her precarious situation in Sweden.

Meitner, despite not receiving the Nobel Prize, had many other recognitions to his career: the Vienna City Prize for Science in 1947, the Max Planck Medal in 1949, the Otto Hahn Prize in 1955, the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1960, the medal Dorothea Schlözer of Göttingen in 1962 and many other awards. Just as Einstein rejected all the prizes that Germany granted her, she accepted them, thinking that it was important for the reinsertion of the country into a normalized routine. In 1966 Hahn, Meitner and Strassman received the famous Enrico Fermi award. Although Otto Hahn tried that Meitner did not receive such recognition, Strassman did not allow it. In his honor Meitnerio was also called the chemical element 109.

Lise Meitner died in Cambridge on October 27, 1968, leaving behind her the discovery of the nuclear fission point and her constant struggle to be recognized as a scientist and woman.

The petite woman who managed to escape from the Nazis. The physics responsible for nuclear fission. The Jewish mother of the atomic bomb and, at the same time, the only scientist who did not want to collaborate in the Manhattan project. Lise Meitner was a celebrity after the Second World War, a heroine at the height of Eleanor Roosevelt. And yet, today it is hardly known. In general literature his pioneering work in nuclear fission is scarcely mentioned and, when his name appears, only his contribution to nuclear physics is spoken of and only marginally. Like other women in science, it would seem that her name would fade. Truly this is the story of an extraordinary woman who left us important lessons.