Meitner and Fission

Lise Meitner
1878 -1968

In this podcast, Jack and Mark discuss the amazing scientific contributions of Lise Meitner and her escape from Nazi Germany. Meitner was the first scientist to explain the physical process she called "nuclear fission" while simulataneously dealing with the difficulties of sexism and World War II. Not given the credit she deserved for this important work, Meitner lived a life of integrity in the midst of difficult personal circumstances and under the mistaken attribution of as the "mother of the atomic bomb."

Podcast length: 51:50

Show Notes:

Selected Awards and Publications associated with Lise Meitner:


Meitner's Enrico Fermi Prize Medal (1966)

Announcement of Meitner winning the Fermi Prize in the November issue of Physics Today

Meitner receiving the Fermi Prize in 1966. On the left is her nephew, Otto Frisch. On the right is the Glenn Seaborg, then president of the United States Atomic Energy Commision. Seaborg won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for the discovery of many transuranium elements. Element 106, Seborgium, was named after Seaborg while he was still alive. He advised US Presidents from Truman to Clinton.

In this "Letter to the Editor" Meitner and Frisch outlined their ideas on nuclear fission. It appeared in the February 11, 1939 edition of the journal Nature. This method was the most expediant way that the idea could be published.

Discussed in the episode:

Meitner and Hahn during the early years at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute in Berlin.

Comic, published in 2016, by Dale DeBacksey, on the lack of credit given to Meitner for her role in the discovery of fission. It depicts a fictional converstaion between Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn.

Lise Meitner, circa 1930

Dutch physicist, Dirk Coster
Coster accompanied Lise Meitner on her escape from Nazi Germany in 1938. He was politically active during Germany's occupation of Holland during WWII. He helped to hide Jews from persecution in his home country.

Otto Frisch
Physicist and nephew of Lise Meitner

Gathering of famous physicists and chemists in Berlin, 1920. On the left is female physicist Hertha Sponer, who contributed to our understanding of Quantum Theory. Next to her is Albert Einstein. Lise Meitner is on the lower row, third from the right, next to Fritz Haber. Otto Hahn is seated to the right of Haber.

Meitner's Gravesite in Cambridge, England
The epitath was written by Lise Meitner's nephew, the physicist Otto Frisch.

Lise Meitner and US President Harry Truman at a dinner in 1946.

Lise Meitner spent many of her later years encouraging woman to take up science as a profession. This photo was taken at Bryn Mawr College, close to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in April, 1959. That's the same month in which Jack and Mark were born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Other items of interest related to this podcast:

This experimental setup is the one Otto Hahn used to conduct the first fission experiment in 1938. The display is at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.