This effort eventually led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project. Albert Einstein was persuaded to write a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning him of the destructive potential. Smeltzer, a curator of the Grolier exhibition, a look at extraordinary women in science.Īctually, the report alarmed those leading physicists. When this paper appeared, all the leading physicists at the time immediately realized, here was a source of great destructive energy,' said Ronald K. 'It was Lise Meitner who explained these experiments as splitting atoms. Frisch would later write about his aunt, 'Boltzmann gave her the vision of physics as a battle for ultimate truth, a vision she never lost.' They also explained the process in a paper that was published in the journal Nature on February 11, 1939.

The substance was actually barium, and they published their results in the journal Naturwissenschaften in January 6, 1939.Īt the same time, Meitner joined forces with her nephew Otto Frisch, and in January 1939, they came up with the term 'fission.' Fission is when an atom separates and creates energy. She suggested that Hahn and Strassmann perform further tests on a uranium product they suspected was radium. On November 13, 1938, Hahn met secretly with Meitner in Copenhagen, according to Sime. It is believed that Siegbahn's prejudice against women in science played a large part in her treatment. Ruth Lewin Sime later wrote in her book, ' Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics,' 'Neither asked to join Siegbahn's group nor given the resources to form her own, she had laboratory space but no collaborators, equipment, or technical support, not even her own set of keys to the workshops and laboratories.' Meitner was considered separate 'from the institute's own personnel' instead of the brilliant scientist she was.

She found herself at the Manne Siegbahn's institute in Stockholm, but she never seemed welcomed. In 1938, after Germany annexed Austria, Vienna-born Meitner fled Nazi Germany and moved to Sweden, where it was safer for the Jewish people like herself, even though she was a practicing Protestant. In the 1930s, Fritz Strassmann joined the team, and the trio investigated the products of neutron bombardment of uranium. The pair also studied nuclear isomerism and beta decay and each of them headed a section in Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. During their research, they were one of the first to isolate the isotope protactinium-231, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Meitner and Hahn were research partners for around 30 years.

Lise Meitner by Ruth Lewin Sime