382: Lise Meitner
Physicist Who Worked With Radioactivity and Nuclear Physics
Born: 17 November 1878, Vienna, Austria
Died: 27 October 1968, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Lise earned her doctorate in physics in 1906.
She co-discovered the element protactinium in 1918.
In 1923, Lise discovered a radiation-less transition that would later become known as the Auger Effect after it was rediscovered by a man named Auger two years later.
After fleeing German occupied Austria in 1938 (due to her being born Jewish, though she was by then a practicing Protestant) she co-discovered nuclear fission—the scientific principle which would lead Einstein to write President Franklin D Roosevelt warning of atomic power.
In 1944, Lise’s co-discoverer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work but she was ignored.
In 1992, the heaviest known element in the universe—element 109—was named Meitnerium in her honor.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
Women in Science by Rachel Ignotofsky
Who Knew? Women in History by Sarah Herman
Sources:
https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/meitner.html
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15166236/lise-meitner
https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/lise-meitner