Who was Lise Meitner?
5 min
Lise Meitner (1878–1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who played a defining role in the discovery of nuclear fission. Despite her major contribution, she never received a Nobel Prize, while Otto Hahn, her research partner, was awarded the Chemistry Nobel in 1944.
Born on November 7, 1878 in Vienna, Austria, Lise Meitner grew up in a relatively well-off Jewish family with a rich cultural background that strongly encouraged her to pursue her studies — a rare opportunity for girls at the time. She developed an early passion for the sciences, in which she excelled.
Education
She enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1901 at the age of 22, where she took numerous courses such as physics, chemistry, and botany. From her second year onward, she decided to focus on physics and attended all the lectures given by Ludwig Boltzmann.
In 1905, she completed her doctoral work on heat conduction in inhomogeneous solids under the supervision of Franz Exner. She presented her work in December and received the highest distinction.
In 1907, she left to continue her studies in Berlin, facing obstacles in the Austrian academic environment.
Her collaboration with Otto Hahn
For more than 30 years, Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn collaborated on pioneering research in radioactivity. Despite her exceptional talent, Meitner had to work in a makeshift basement laboratory because women were not allowed in official laboratories.
Lise Meitner died on October 27, 1968 in Cambridge, England. The Los Alamos Laboratory would later acknowledge her extraordinary contributions.
"Science is neither soulless nor ignoble. It brings us closer together."
– Lise Meitner
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