Electrical Engineer w/ a Blog

She’s been dubbed the “mother of the atomic bomb”, because she explained what happened in the first fission experiments before anyone else in scientific publications, but she had no role in the Manhattan Project, or the development of any wartime use of fissionable elements.

The extremely radioactive element 109, meitnerium, is named after Prof. Meitner.

She wasn’t just the first woman to work with Max Planck. She was the first woman to be allowed to even attend one of his lectures! Planck (typically chauvinist) didn’t even allow women to be in the room – when he met Meitner, she impressed him so much that he changed his mind. Just one year later, Meitner became his assistant. 

The Auger Effect should, by the rules of scientific nomenclature, be called the Meitner Effect. She discovered it one year before Pierre Victor Auger did. 

In 1917, Lise Meitner discovered the element Protactinium, together with Otto Hahn.

She had to discuss the nuclear fission experiments with Hahn by mail. The reason was because it was 1930s Germany, she was Jewish, and she was forced to flee from the Nazis. She (barely) managed to escape to Sweden, with nothing more than the clothes she was wearing, a few coins, and a diamond ring she’d been given in case she needed it for a bribe. While she devised the mechanism behind the fission of Uranium-235, she was a refugee. Her work was published because, hey, if you’re already a refugee with nothing, what’s the worst that could happen?

While several teams of scientists were trying to create elements heavier than Uranium, none of them knew that their work would lead to weapons. Calling her the mother of the atomic bomb is an insult. She was the first to use Einstein’s equations to explain the huge amount of energy released by nuclear fission (Einstein himself had great respect for this) – and as a result, she had been acutely aware from the very start how potentially dangerous it could be. The Manhattan project invited her to work for them but she flatly refused, saying “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!” Having worked as a nurse during World War I, so she was painfully familiar with the hellish side of war.

Otto Hahn claimed the nobel prize for discovering nuclear fission. Lise Meitner didn’t even get a mention. Though some time later, element 109, Meitnerium, was named after her. Previously, the name “Hahnium” had been proposed for element 104, but was rejected in favour of Rutherfordium.

As well as an element, she also has a main belt Asteroid, a lunar crater, and one of the relatively few craters on Venus named after her.