Lise Meitner

1878 - 1968

1878

Lise was born in 1878 in Vienna Austria, at the time the center and capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the third of eight children raised by progressive parents who while technically Jewish, did not practice and baptized all their children as protestants.

1892

At 14, Lise finished the traditional school for girls.

1897

Lise prepared to become a French teachers, but Austrian universities were opened to women she took two years of intensive private tutoring to make up for eight years of school for boys.

1901

Lise enters the University of Austria where the physics lessons were taught by famed theoretical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann.

1906

Lise received her PhD with a thesis under Franz S. Exner covering experimental physics. Unfortunately there were no positions available for women aside from teachers in the girls school which taught no math or physics.

1907

Lise went to Berlin to take courses from Max Planck another world class theoretical physicist. He would become her mentor and close friend. At this time she also met Otto Hahn, a radiochemst of the same age.

She publishes 20 papers between now and 1912, many with Otto, but even with that work she was barely tolerated. She had no official position and no pay.

1913

In 1912, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (KWI) was established Hahn was appointed professor and head of a portion of radioactivity. Lise, still considered a “guest” was appointed by Planck to be his assistant, the lowest paid position possible.

1914

During WWI Lise joined the Austrian army as a volunteer X-ray nurse. Otto was conscripted into the Germany miitary.

1916

Lise returned to Berlin and her own section of physics in the KWI, beginning work on the isolation and identification of protactinum while Otto was away at war.

1918

Reported discovery of protactinium.

1920

Lise starts work on nuclear physics, with emphasis on her studies of magnetic beta spectra.

Title of Professor at the KWI

1922

Habilitation at the University of Berlin, became a privatdozentin, one of the first in Germany.

1926

Appointed adjunct professor of physics at the University of Berlin, one of the first women professors in Germany.

1933

Nazis