ESSA Berlin: Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner was a prodigious physicist as well as an interesting figure in global women’s history. Born in Vienna, she quickly developed an aptitude for physics and became the second woman to graduate with a degree in physics. Seeking more opportunities than just teaching, she left Vienna and moved to Berlin where she was given a position at the university and a “lab” to conduct experiments in. Because she was a woman, she wasn’t given a true lab but a woodshop to work in. Being not only a woman but also Jewish led to more issues in pre-WWII Germany, so she moved to Stockholm to continue her research. She died in 1968.
Lise Meitner is an example to me of the indomitable nature of the human spirit in the face of opposition, in this case coming from human tradition. She was barred from researching in her hometown of Berlin, so she uprooted her life to move to where she could. In the woodshop where she was sequestered, she discovered Proacinium as well as fission but was not given recognition for either. She was stripped of all her positions as a result. She started again in Stockholm and continued her research. She was invited to work on the Manhattan Project but refused on moral grounds. She was nominated for 49 Nobel Prizes but was awarded none.
It seems that now that enough time has gone by for the world to recognize some of her achievements, each of the three main cities where she lived and worked is scrambling to claim Lise Meitner as their own. In Berlin’s efforts to commemorate her at the university where she worked, a small bronze statue of her was erected. On her tombstone, her nephew wrote: “A physicist who never lost her humanity.” An element, Meitnerium, was named after her. (Only 16 elements are named after scientists and Lise Meitner and Marie Curie are the only women.) All in all, I feel her commemoration has been good but perhaps not good enough as she remains obscure even among STEM circles.
What an awesome blog post, Tate! Lise Meitner faced a lot of obstacles in her life, specifically due to being Jewish and a woman. It made it very hard for her to work on what she wanted to and for her to receive recognition for her contributions. It makes me sick that Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for their joint discovery of nuclear fission. While gender discrimination isn’t as common today, it still exists and is something we need to be aware of and work to fight against.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Lise Meitner is my girl and I think that learning about her is so interesting. It is particularly interesting to me that she was allowed to be educated but wasn't allowed to do anything more than teach in Vienna, so she had to leave her home and move to Berlin, where she could finally work in a lab. But wait, it wasn't really a lab, it was a wood shop. But hey, she still discovered nuclear fission. But wait again, her partner Otto Hahn took most of the credit for it and he won a Nobel Prize for it, not her! Alexa, play "the Man" by Taylor Swift. She must have been exhausted from never getting the same recognition her colleges got but she never let that get in the way of her work. I think this is something that still happens today, not as bad but it still happens. Like how men's opinions are often taken as fact, whereas women have to present a fact with plenty of evidence. smh.
ReplyDeleteLisa Meitner demonstrates nuance in issues relevant to gender in Berlin. While she was allowed to do research and teach in the university that hired her in Berlin, she faced many obstacles imposed on her by the same institution. Doubtless there were other qualified and intelligent women who were held back from participating in scientific research and development on the basis of sex given that Meitner barely made it into academia as a research professor and she was one of the most brilliant minds of her day. We are forced to consider the oppression of women as part of the creation of Berlin as a cultural capital when we consider Lisa Meitner.
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