Meitner, Lisa

Lisa Meitner was born in Vienna , was the third of eight children in a Jewish family; Her father, Philip Meitner, was a famous chess player in the late 19th century. As happened then with many young women who were looking for themselves in science, parents were against her entering the university, but Meitner insisted on her own, and entered the University of Vienna in 1901 , where she began to study physics under the guidance of Ludwig Boltzmann and Franz Exner . In 1905, she was the first among women at the university to receive a PhD in physics. After that, Meitner went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin to start studying chemistry under the guidance of Max Planck and work together with Otto Gan . Using their knowledge of physics and Ghana's knowledge of chemistry, they worked together for 30 years.

In 1908, she was baptized, turning to Lutheranism ^{[7] [8]} .

In 1917, Gan and Meitner discovered the first long-lived isotope protactinium .

In 1923, Lisa Meitner opened a non-radiative transition, called the Auger effect, in honor of the French explorer Pierre Victor Auger , who independently discovered it in 1925.

In 1926, Meitner became a professor at the University of Berlin . She was the first woman in Germany to reach such heights in science.

After the discovery of the neutron in 1932, the question arose of creating transuranic elements . The competition began between Ernest Rutherford from England, Irene Joliot-Curie from France, Enrico Fermi from Italy and Lisa Meitner together with Otto Gan from Berlin. They all thought it would be an abstract study, followed by a Nobel Prize . None of them suggested that these studies would result in the creation of nuclear weapons .

After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, Dirk Coster convinced Meitner to leave Germany and go to Sweden . Due to her Jewish descent, she did not have a valid passport, and she was nearly detained at the border. Thanks to a fluke, Meitner managed to cross the border with Holland .

Lisa Meitner continued to work at the Manne Sigban Institute in Stockholm , but, probably due to Sigbana's bias towards female scientists, she worked alone without any support.

In November, Gan and Meitner secretly met in Copenhagen to discuss a new series of experiments, for this purpose they also exchanged letters. In the Ghana laboratory in Berlin, experiments were carried out to prove nuclear fission . From the correspondence that has been preserved, it follows that Gan would never have believed in a fission of the nucleus if Meitner had not convinced him of this. She was the first to split the atomic nucleus into parts: uranium nuclei decayed into barium and krypton nuclei, with the release of several neutrons and a large amount of energy. In December 1938, Niels Bohr noted in his letter that much more energy is released in the processes of bombardment of uranium atoms than is assumed by the theory of non-decaying shell. Many argue that Lisa Meitner was the first to carry out calculations, taking into account the fact that the shells can decay.

For political reasons, Lisa Meitner was forbidden to publish with Otto Gan in 1939. Gan published data on a chemical experiment in January 1939, and Meitner described the physical justification for the experiment a month later, along with her nephew, physicist Otto Robert Frisch . Meitner noted that the nuclear fission process can give rise to a chain reaction that can lead to large energy emissions. This statement caused a sensation in the scientific community. The knowledge with which it was possible to create weapons of incredible strength could be in German hands. American scientists Leo Sylard , Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner convinced Albert Einstein to write a warning letter to President Franklin Roosevelt , after which the Manhattan project was created. Being a pacifist , Meitner refused to work in Los Alamos , saying: “ I will not make a bomb! "

In 1944, Otto Gan received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear decay . According to many scholars, Lisa Meitner deserved the same honor, but Otto Gan said that the prize should be awarded only for achievements in chemistry. Meitner herself wrote that Gan certainly deserved a prize, but her work with Frisch was an important contribution to clarifying the process of uranium fission. Many argue that Meitner did not give the Nobel Prize due to the fact that one of the committee members was Sigban, who did not like her. Meitner did not wait for the Nobel Prize in Physics. However, in 1966, Gan, Strassman and Meitner together received the Enrico Fermi Award . In 1946, the National Women's Press Club (USA) named Lisa Meitner “Woman of the Year”. In 1949, she was awarded the Max Planck Medal .

In 1960, Meitner moved to Cambridge , where she died on October 27, 1968 , a few days before her 90th birthday.

In honor of Lisa Meitner, the 109th element of the periodic table was named - Meitnerium , Meitner Crater on the back of the Moon and Meitner Crater on Venus, Meitner asteroid (6999) , Gan and Meitner Institute for Nuclear Research ^[9] , .

The Science Foundation and the Interstate Association for Postgraduate Education in Austria have established Lisa Meitner Research Fellowships for scientific research in the field of atomic physics.

In the book “ Physicists continue to joke, ” the following curiosity is given ^[10] :

Lisa Meitner - the first woman physicist in Germany, was able to get a degree in the early 20s. The title of her dissertation “Problems of Space Physics” seemed unthinkable to some journalist, and the newspaper published: “Problems of Cosmetic Physics”.

Although in reality Lisa Meitner defended her dissertation on the topic “Thermal Conductivity of Inhomogeneous Solids” in 1906 ^[11] .

Of the 169 published works, these deserve the most attention:

• 1906: Wärmeleitung in inhomogenen Körpern
• 1907: Über die Absorption von α- und β-Strahlen
• 1918: Die Muttersubstanz des Actiniums, ein neues radioaktives Element von langer Lebensdauer (with Otto Gan )
• 1919: Über das Protactinium und die Frage nach der Möglichkeit seiner Herstellung als chemisches Element
• 1922: Über der Entstehung der Betastrahl-Spektren radioaktiver Substanzen
• 1924: Über den Aufbau des Atominneren
• 1927: Der Zusammenhang von α- und β-Strahlen
• 1935: Der Aufbau der Atomkerne (with Robert Frisch )
• 1939: Disintegration of uranium by neutrons: a new type of nuclear reaction (with Robert Frisch )
• 1954: Atomenergie und Frieden (with Otto Gan )
• 1960: The Status of Women in the Professions
• 1963: Wege und Irrwege der Kernenergie

• In honor of Lisa Meitner named street in the German city of Borken .
• In 1970, the International Astronomical Union named Lisa Meitner the crater on the far side of the moon .
• In 1979, the International Astronomical Union assigned its name to a crater on Venus .
• In 1997, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially adopted the name Maitnerium in her honor for a chemical element of group VIII of a side subgroup of the 7th period of the periodic system of elements with atomic number 109, which was previously known as unified Une (or ec-iridium ) ^[12] .
• In 2000, the European Physical Society established .

• Friedrich Guernek "Pioneers of the Atomic Age" M .: Progress, 1974. - 372 with text
• Fermi L. Atoms at our place. M., 1959
• Temples Yu. A. Meitner (Meitner) Lize (Meitner Lise) // Physicists: Biographical Reference / Ed. A.I. Akhiezer . - Ed. 2nd, rev. and add. - M .: Nauka , 1983 .-- S. 183. - 400 p. - 200,000 copies. (per.)

• site dedicated to Lisa Meitner
• Leonid Mininberg: “Biographies of famous Jews whose names are given to the streets of the city” (neopr.) . Date of treatment March 23, 2009.
• http://www.alhimik.ru/teleclass/pril/meitner.shtml
• http://www.physchem.chimfak.rsu.ru/Source/History/Persones/Meitner.html
• URSS Physicists keep on joking. Edition 6. M .: 2011, p. 89