Lise Meitner splits the atom Traditional Cache
Lise Meitner splits the atom
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Lise Meitner was perhaps one of the most deserving persons never to have won a Nobel Prize. Meitner was born in Vienna in 1878, the third of eight children in a Jewish family. At a time when women were not allowed to attend public institutions of higher education, she was able to obtain a private education in physics thanks to the support of her parents. By 1905 Meitner became the second woman ever to obtain a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Vienna.
After this, Lise Meitner moved to Berlin to pursue a career in physics. In Berlin she became a research assistant to the famous German physicist Max Planck and worked in his lab studying the radioactive decay of atoms. Here she also started working with the German chemist Otto Hahn who was the same age as Meitner. Their collaboration lasted for more than 30 years and together they discovered numerous new atomic isotopes. Meitner was very successful during her time in Berlin, winning the Leibniz Medal in 1917 for discovering the first long-lived isotope of the element Protactinium together with Hahn. In 1922, she discovered the cause for the Auger effect, which was named after Pierre Victor Auger, a French physicist who independently discovered the effect a year later.
In 1926, Meitner became the first female professor in physics in Germany at the University of Berlin. Together with Hahn, she led the research in the 1930's on transuranian elements, elements heavier than Uranium, all of which are unstable. This work culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission, where heavy atoms split into lighter elements, by Hahn and Meitner in December of 1938. However by then, Meitner had been forced to flee Germany. After Hitler came to power in 1933, it became increasingly difficult for people of Jewish descent to maintain high positions. Initially protected by her Austrian citizenship, Meitner was finally forced to leave Germany in July of 1938. After a short time in the Netherlands, Meitner eventually migrated to Stockholm.
Towards the end of 1938, Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann performed the first experiments showing that when Uranium absorbs neutrons, it can split into Barium and Krypton atoms by nuclear fission. Even though Meitner had left Germany, she was still highly involved in the discovery of nuclear fission through correspondence with Hahn. Meitner, together with her nephew Otto Frisch, interpreted the results from the experiments and was able to explain why no elements heavier than Uranium exist. They were also the first to understand that the energy released by nuclear fission obeyed Einstein's famous equation E=mc2, that is, the energy released is only due to difference in masses between the mother and daughter atoms. In 1945, Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry (for the year 1944) for the discovery of nuclear fission. The fact that Meitner was not included in this prize has been seen as one of the Nobel committees greatest blunders, and the reasoning behind this omission has long been debated.
Meitner stayed in Sweden for more than 20 years, from 1938 to 1960. In Stockholm she first worked at Nobel prize winner Manne Siegbahn's laboratory. She also worked at the Swedish Defence Research Establishment (Försvarets forskningsanstalt, FOA) and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). At KTH, Meitner was involved in the planning and development of the first nuclear test reactor in Sweden, R1. The R1 reactor was active from 1954 to 1970 and was located in the bedrock under what today are the Q buildings at KTH. The reactor was later dismantled. The reactor hall has been preserved and is today occasionally used as a performance space.
Lise Meitner went on to become a professor at the University College of Stockholm (what is today Stockholm University). In 1949 she denounced her Austrian citizenship and became a Swedish citizen. She retired in 1960 and moved to England, where she died in 1968, aged 89. Today, Meitner is remembered for her pioneering work on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Her signature can be found in the new physics department of Stockholm University on a reproduction of Oskar Klein's "guestbook", a wall in the lecture hall in the old physics department where visiting physicist would sign their names. In 1997, element 109 was officially named Meitnerium, in memory of Meitner, and is the only element named after a non-mythological woman.
This cache is placed as a small tribute to Lise Meitner. The location is a nice and peaceful place on the (publicly accessible) KTH campus next to the location of the R1 reactor hall. You do not need to cross any train tracks. Don't forget to bring a pen!
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