Historical STEMinist’s profile on: Lise Meitner ( 1878 - 1968 )
became the second woman to obtain a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna in 1905
was awarded the Leibniz Medal by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1917 for discovering the first long-lived isotope of the element protactinium
In 1926, she became the first woman in Germany to assume a post of full professor in physics, at the University of Berlin
called the “German Marie Curie” by Albert Einstein
fled Germany forever in July 1938, after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Originally, her Austrian citizenship protected her, despite being Jewish, and she simply buried herself in her work, ignoring the danger surrounding her. She later concedes that "It was not only stupid but also very wrong that I did not leave at once.“
realized that Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, explained the source of the tremendous releases of energy in nuclear fission, by the conversion of rest mass into kinetic energy, popularly described as the conversion of mass to energy, recognizing the possibility for a chain reaction of enormous explosive potential
refused an offer to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, declaring “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”
was bitterly critical of other German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazis and done nothing to protest against the crimes of Hitler’s regime. Referring to the leading German scientist Werner Heisenberg, she said: “Heisenberg and many millions with him should be forced to see these camps and the martyred people.”
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