LISE MEITNER (1878 - 1968)
"I shall have nothing to do with the bomb!"
Before the play...
Lise Meitner grew up in a time where it was challenging for women to gain an education at all, yet alone in physics. She was born in Vienna, where girls were expected to leave school at 14. Physics was seen as a subject in decline, many believed there was nothing new to be discovered. As Meitner dreamed of entering the world of physics, she was not just a pariah due to her gender but also because of her area of interest.
From a very young age Lise had been passionate about maths and science, legend has it she used to keep scientific findings in a secret notebook under her pillow from just six years old. Her parents were relatively wealthy and cultured, she and her seven siblings were encouraged to be curious and inquisitive as they made their way through life. Lise’s mother taught them: “Listen to your father and me, but think for yourself.”
Lise wanted to attend University, but her father knew it would be hard for her to get there with her formal education having ended at 14. He encouraged Lise to gain a teaching qualification, which she did at age 21, and he then paid for her private tuition which helped her pass the entrance exam in 1901.
Meitner attended the University of Vienna and was the second woman to graduate with a PhD in Physics.
With assistance from her father, Lise moved to Berlin in September 1907 where she attended Max Planck’s physics lectures. She became a part of Berlin’s physics scene and met her lifelong friend Otto Hahn.
Lise Meitner, aged around 20
During the play...
While Otto worked as a paid staff member at the Kasier Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (which opened in October 1912), Lise followed him as a poorly paid assistant. She earned less money for similar hours of work and was not financially independent until she was 34 years old.
During the First World War Lise worked as an X-Ray nurse. In her spare time, she would work with Otto to bombard uranium atoms with neutrons to try and create a new, larger element. What they were really doing was reducing the size of the uranium. It would be years before they realised they were conducting the first experiments in nuclear fission.
When she was 43, Lise became a Physics lecturer at the University of Berlin. When Hitler came to power, many people with Jewish heritage fled Germany. Lise, an Austrian with Jewish ancestry, could have followed but chose not to. Instead she stayed as a researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, keen to continue her work with Hahn.
She was forced to admit defeat and flee the country when Germany invaded Austria in March 1938. Officially, Lise was no longer an Austrian Jew but a German Jew; and German Jews were not allowed under Nazi leadership. When she tried to escape a new law was introduced in Germany that prevented scientists from leaving the country – an attempt to stop the brain drain and ensure Germany had plenty of scientists around to help win the war. In the end, Meitner escaped with the help from her close friends and the Dutch government. She fled to the Netherlands on July 13th 1938; she was sixty years old and had no personal possessions. She arrived at Dirk Coster’s home with only a diamond ring that Otto Hahn had given her to use as a bribe if necessary.
Meitner travelled on to Copenhagen, and then Stockholm. In Stockholm she was kept from much of her work, apart from the letters she exchanged with Hahn. One day, Hahn noticed that uranium broke down into barium when a neutron was fired at it and asked his colleague in Stockholm to explain what was happening.
On a skiing trip with her nephew, Meitner cracked it. Nuclear fission had been discovered.
In 1944 Otto Hahn would receive the Nobel Prize for this work.
After the play...
While her colleagues fought for her to be recognised for work towards the Nuclear Fission project, Lise seemed at peace with way things had worked out. The only area of discomfort for Lise was her annoyance at fission being used to build atomic weapons, rather than for the good of humanity. Fission is a viable sustainable energy source.
She died in 1968 while living in Cambridge, where she had moved to be closer to her nephew (Otto Frisch).
The element Meitnerium was named after her in 1997.
Lise and Otto Hahn working in a lab, 1925
A plaque outside a former wood workshop in Germany reading "This house is where two radium-explorers, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, have served science through their meaningful discoveries from 1906/7 to 1912."