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Lise Meitner: The Mother of the Atomic Bomb - Coggle Diagram
Lise Meitner: The Mother of the Atomic Bomb
Personal Life
Early Years
Born on 11/07/1878
Born in Vienna, Austria
Parents were assimilated Jews (ethnically Jewish but did not practice Judaism)
7 siblings
4 sisters
3 brothers
Family was upper-middle class
Teenage Years
Nothing is known about her teenage years, except that she was extremely devoted to her studies
Adult Years
Meitner never married or had children
Left Vienna for Berlin, Germany in 1907
Forced to flee from Germany into Stockholm, Sweden when Hitler came to power
After her retirement, she moved to Cambridge, England where she died on 10/27/1960
1908: Formally withdrew from the Jewish community and was baptized
Education
Private Tutoring
From her elementary - high school years Meitner, as well as her sisters, were given private tutoring
Her father insisted that each of his daughters received the same education as his sons
Excelled at Mathematics from an early age
University
First woman to be admitted to the University of Vienna's physics lectures and laboratories (age 23)
From 1901 - 1906, she studied with Anton Lampa, Stefan Meyer, and Ludwig Boltzmann
Second woman to receive a PhD in physics from the University of Vienna where she met Max Planck (the father of quantum theory)
Three of Meitner's sisters also earned PhD degrees later on
Career
In 1907, Max Planck invited Meitner to Berlin for post-doctoral study and research
From 1907 - 1912, she worked at the Berlin Institute for Chemistry as an unpaid research scientist
She was not permitted access to the laboratories because she was a woman
She met Otto Hahn at the institute in Berlin in 1907
Hahn became her longest research partner in discovering new radioactive elements and researching their physical properties
When she fled from the Third Reich, Meitner and Hahn secretly met in Copenhagen to discuss their next round of experiments
These experiments provided the foundation for nuclear fission
Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the research on fission, dismissing and downplaying Meitner's contributions since she fled Germany
This mistake was never acknowledged tho it was partly rectified in 1966 when Meitner, Hahn, and their third research partner, Strassman, were given the Enrico Fermi Award for their research on fission
During her time in Sweden, Meitner also developed a close working relationship with Niels Bohr who is famous for his contribution to the modern model of the atom
In 1992, element 109 (the heaviest element in existence) was named Meitnerium after Meitner for her contributions to chemistry and physics
Discovered the radioactive element Protactinium in 1918
In 1923, she discovered the radiationless transition known as the Auger effect (named after Pierre Victor Auger who discovered the reaction 2 years later)
Research Impacts
Her early research into radiation has provided the foundations for modern cancer and internal organ disorder detection and imaging
When her research on fission was published in 1939, Einstein wrote a warning letter to President Roosevelt due to the explosive potential of nuclear fission
This letter led to the start of the Manhattan Project, a research and development operation that produced the world's first nuclear bombs
The Manhattan Project eventually created the the bombs that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki
A lot of people assume that Meitner had a direct hand in the development of Project Manhattan, however she wanted nothing to do with it and publicly declared "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!"
She never intended for her research to be used to harm people, in fact her epitaph reads, "Lise Meitner: A physicist who never lost her humanity"
The Auger effect is still in use by scientists to study the properties of chemicals and compounds, nuclei, and subatomic particles