Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner was an incredible physicist from Vienna, but she did most of her work in Berlin due to the lack of opportunities for women in Austria. She was the second women to graduate from the University of Vienna with a doctorate in physics, and after her graduation she moved to Berlin because they had promised her a laboratory where she could do her research. This laboratory in Berlin ended up being in a woodshop (that she still worked in - girl boss!), but she also became a physics professor and department head at Kaiser Wilhem Institute. She worked in Berlin with a man named Otto Hahn, and "together" (Lise Meitner was mostly the brains behind the operation, but guess who got most of the public credit!), they discovered nuclear fission. Throughout her lifetime, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 49 TIMES and won 0. Guess who did win... Otto Hahn. Lise was forced to give up her positions when the Nazis came into power because she was Jewish, and ended up moving to Sweden and then Britain to be with her family.

Obviously, Lise Meitner's contributions are extremely important for the field of physics and also for women in science. Her discovery of nuclear fission and the element protactinium were crucial for the world of nuclear physics and science. She also shows us that women are able of achieving just as much as (and sometimes more than) men in STEM. Her ethics during her career are also extremely inspiring to learn about. She was invited by her nephew and others to participate in the Manhattan Project (think Oppenheimer and nuclear bombs), but she did not participate because she thought about what her contribution could do and what its effect would be on society, even though so many of the men in her field did not.

I think that Lise Meitner is a woman that has been commemorated well! We learned today that if you put Lise Meitner in on Google Maps, just in Berlin there are many many streets, plazas, and schools named after her that will pop up. We got the chance to see a little statue of her in front of a university, as well as a plaque outside of the woodshop where her laboratory was.There is an element named after her on the periodic table, which I think is so cool and so fitting. I love when women are commemorated in a way that reflects their career. I also think it is lovely that the inscription on her gravestone is "Lise Meitner a physicist who never lost her humanity" because this commemorates her for who she was and her character. I do wish that more people knew about Lise Meitner and who she was. She is maybe the most important female scientist besides Marie Curie, yet most of the world doesn't even know her name.

Information from: the professors' lectures and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner