A Woman to Know: Lise Meitner
Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and animation. — Lise
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
In 1939, Lise and her colleague Otto Hahn published the results from their latest experiment in radioactivity. Lise and Otto had been working together for years in the then-infant world of nuclear physics. She suspected that splitting an atom of uranium would lead to a gigantic release of energy, and though she didn't know it at the time, Lise's work would later lead to the discovery of nuclear fission, the creation of nuclear weapons and today's world of nuclear energy.
In 1944, Otto won the Pulitzer Prize for Science for his work on this project.
Lise didn't win anything.
Add to your library list:
Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Ruth Lewin Sime)
Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Patricia Rife)
Read more:
The Woman Behind the Bomb (The Washington Post)
Lise Meitner, "Our Madame Curie" (Wired)
Lise Meitner (The Jewish Women's Archive)
Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, And the Idea Persists (The New York Times)
Lise Meitner (Britannica)
The Day the Nuclear Age was Born (The New York Times)
Lise Meitner (Berkeley Nuclear Research Center)
Hear more:
The Path to Nuclear Fission: The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn (Rosemarie Reed)
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