Meitner, Lise

Meitner, Lise
born Nov. 7, 1878, Vienna, Austria
died Oct. 27, 1968, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.

German physicist.

She worked at Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (1912–38), also teaching at the University of Berlin (1926–38). At a laboratory that she set up with Otto Hahn, the two isolated the radioactive isotope protactinium-231. In the 1930s, with Hahn and Fritz Strassmann (1902–80), she investigated the products of neutron bombardment of uranium. She left Germany in 1938 for Sweden. After Hahn and Strassmann demonstrated that barium appears in neutron-bombarded uranium, she and her nephew Otto Frisch (1904–79) explained the physical characteristics of this division and in 1939 proposed the term fission for the process. She shared the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award with Hahn and Strassmann. Element 109, meitnerium, is named in her honour.

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▪ Austrian physicist
born Nov. 7, 1878, Vienna
died Oct. 27, 1968, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.
 Austrian-born physicist who shared the Enrico Fermi Award (1966) with the chemists Otto Hahn (Hahn, Otto) and Fritz Strassmann (Strassmann, Fritz) for their joint research that led to the discovery of uranium fission.

      After receiving her doctorate at the University of Vienna (1906), Meitner attended Max Planck's lectures at Berlin in 1907 and joined Hahn in research on radioactivity. During three decades of association, she and Hahn were among the first to isolate the isotope protactinium-231 (which they called protactinium), studied nuclear isomerism and beta decay, and in the 1930s (along with Strassmann) investigated the products of neutron bombardment of uranium. Because she was Jewish, she left Nazi Germany in the summer of 1938 to settle in Sweden. After Hahn and Strassmann had demonstrated that barium appears in neutron-bombarded uranium, Meitner, with her nephew Otto Frisch (Frisch, Otto Robert), elucidated the physical characteristics of this division and in January 1939 proposed the term fission for the process. She retired to England in 1960.

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Universalium. 2010.

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