10. Lise Meitner: Breaking Atoms and Barriers

The Remarkable Journey of Lise Meitner

In this episode of 'She Changed History', hosts Vicky and Simon delve into the extraordinary life of Austrian physicist Lise Meitner. From her early years in Vienna and her groundbreaking scientific contributions to her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany, the episode highlights Meitner's perseverance in the face of adversity. The discussion covers her significant role in the discovery of nuclear fission, the controversial Nobel Prize snub, and her enduring legacy in science. Listeners are also encouraged to learn more about Ada Lovelace, another pioneering woman in technology.

Sources are:
New Scientist Obituary https://www.newscientist.com/people/lise-meitner/
The Washington Post Article The Woman Behind the Bomb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/lisemeitner.htm
Lisa Meitner, A Life in Physics by Ruth Lewin Sime ISBN 0520089065

00:00 Introduction and Festive Greetings
00:48 Christmas Menu Controversies
01:58 Celebrating Ada Lovelace
02:43 Introducing Lise Meitner
04:07 Early Life and Education
06:39 Challenges in Academia
08:14 Collaborations and Contributions
11:03 Recognition and Struggles
19:16 World War I and Beyond
23:09 Lise Meitner's Early Career and Discoveries
24:20 Challenges During the Nazi Regime
26:37 Escape from Germany
31:10 The Discovery of Nuclear Fission
39:39 Recognition and Legacy
42:47 Conclusion and Reflections

Transcript

audio1327313102: 0:06

excited. Okay. Ready? I'm ready. Cool. Hi, Vicky. Hi, Simon. Hi, how you doing? And welcome everyone to She Changed History. Thank you. I'm in my Christmas jumper for those watching clips on YouTube or Mm hmm. Or our Insta, I'm in full festive swing, are you feeling Christmassy? Yeah, my wreath's up and it looks much better than I thought, so that's nice. I tried to do some Christmas shopping today but I just couldn't. I couldn't get in the vibe, so I abandoned ship and came home. so I think we'll get in there, and then we've got this Christmas meal tonight, so hopefully that'll help with Christmas. Choir Christmas meal. Choir Christmas meal, yeah, looking forward to it. I'm very excited, um, but Controversially, there wasn't a Christmas menu that was shared. It was only food. Yeah, well, I'm actually quite happy about that. I generally don't, yeah, I'm not keen on restaurants that do a Christmas menu because it's always like a worse version of their normal menu. Oh, that's, I feel like that's so unfounded. What's going on there? Did you just have a bad time once? Yeah, I've had one bad experience and therefore dismissed Christmas menus forevermore. Forever and ever and ever. Well, we were going to book that Italian in Gloucester for my birthday meal this Friday. Yeah. But they were, because it's December, they were forcing us to have the Christmas menu. Which doesn't have on it the best dishes on their menu, and it's more expensive, and you've got to pay in advance. So what are we doing? Going to Monmouth. Okay, is that what I've, that's Italian as well in Monmouth? It is, yeah. Oh, okay. I was like, I've ordered Italian. I was panicking then. I was like, what's happening? I've definitely ordered Italian. Oh my gosh. And talking of celebrations, a little fun fact before we start is that we're recording on the 11th of December. We don't know when this will air. Um, but, um, But yesterday on the 10th of December was Ada Lovelace's birthday. Oh, excellent. Yeah, so I shared our Ada episode because obviously you did a great episode on Ada Lovelace. I can't remember what number she is. Number two. She was right out the gate, so Ada Lovelace. So, episode two, the rebellious romantic who birthed the digital age. And you can celebrate Ada by listening to the episode, rating and reviewing. These, all the things, all the things to keep us relevant. What have you got for us today, Simon? Well, today we've got an absolute banger, of science. Love it. an Austrian physicist. So today we shine spotlight on Lisa Meitner, a brilliant physicist whose contributions to nuclear science were nothing short of revolutionary. Meitner's journey is one of intellectual curiosity, unwavering perseverance, and unfortunately, It's a stark reminder of the challenges faced by women in science, particularly during the tumultuous first half of the 20th century. Join us as we explore the life of this remarkable woman from her early years in Vienna to her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany, her groundbreaking scientific achievements, and the controversial Nobel Prize snub that marred her well deserved recognition. Nobel Prize snub, That sounds Very much the purpose of this podcast. Right up my street. You need to be informed and furious in equal measure. They're the feelings I want to feel when we do this, so yeah. And also we've got an escape from the Nazis as well, so I feel like it's got all the hallmarks of a She Changed History, yeah. Very cool. All right. And so our sources today, are an obituary from New Scientist, a Washington Post article, The Woman Behind the Bomb, and a fantastic book, Lisa Mightner, A Life in Physics, written by Ruth Lewis Syme. Okay, let's go. So Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Vienna, to a Jewish family, quite well off, educated. Her father was one of the first Jewish lawyers admitted to practice in Austria. Oh My gosh, they're quite forward They're forward thinking. Yeah Yeah, and she was brought up with this sort of forward thinking Freethinking mindset, at the time education for women in Austria, wasn't prioritized. They were, at most, they could be a teacher. Okay. her father wasn't on board with that and encouraged them, to be inquisitive and follow education and follow their interests. And so at the age of eight, she started, doing her own little science experiments. Like Ada, just like we were talking about. Just like Ada, yeah. Like Ada Livingston the third. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she was looking at the colors on sort of Films and oil slicks and kept a little diary of her scientific experiments under her pillow Very romanticized. Yes, isn't it? Right? at the time women couldn't go to, go into higher education, so they weren't allowed to progress past a certain point, and you needed your, higher education diploma to then get into university, something called a matura. She was keen and her family were wealthy. So much like Ada again, she was able to have private tuition. Nice. And sat a sort of independent external Matura exam, she along with 13 other girls sat it, only four of them passed, so she passed and got into, university of Vienna. Okay. And. Well, one of the lecturers there was Ludwig Boltzmann, She loved his lectures. And so she entered university in 1901, and in 1906 she got her doctorate. She was only the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics in the, in the University of Vienna. Nice. Um, three years after the first. Does she talk about her time at Vienna at all? Like, was she ostracized, or? Uh, not particularly, although coming up, there is some, when she gets to Germany. She's heading off to Germany. Yeah, I can find. So her dissertation was on thermal conduction in, in homogenous bodies. Haven't read it. I'm sure it's great, but it got hurt. You didn't read it as research for the podcast, Simon. I didn't read it, I'm afraid. Simon, the disservice you're doing on listeners. so Along the way, she was asked, she sort of got a bit of a reputation that she was good at doing experiments. She was happy to learn and investigate independently, so a fellow called, Paul Ehrenfest asked her to investigate, an article that Lord Rayleigh had written on This is like a, um, physic name drop. It really is. You sound like you've gone to a Hollywood party and you're just dropping all these names. Oh yeah, yeah, I was just speaking to Nils Paul the other day, yeah. He's a great guy, great guy, yeah, so friendly. Paul are in real life as well. so Lord Rayleigh had done an experiment which had produced results that he wasn't able to explain. she had a look at it. and was able to explain the results. And then made further predictions on it based on her, the explanation that she'd given, which she then verified through her own experiments. Come on, Lee, this is cool. Right, she's like 28 at the time, has only recently got her doctorate and already she's meeting these bigwigs of science. And contributing as well. And contributing. Yeah. A little bit down the line she was introduced to the concept of radioactivity, still quite a new concept at this time. Remember this is around the time of Marie Curie. So radioactivity, this newish phenomenon, she was introduced to it and she started doing her own experiments. She likes an experiment, we know that. She loves an experiment. Submitted her findings to a scientific journal. And her experiment was one of the experiments that led, I'm sorry it's another name drop, that led Ernest Rutherford to predict the nuclear atom. Wow, he's a big name to drop. He's a big name drop. He's huge. Even Vicky's heard of him. She brings out useful results that other people enjoy and use. She left the University of Vienna to go to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Berlin at this time was really the center of physics, physics research. and it's this institute that physicist Max Planck taught. Max Planck, another massive name. Is this like a special time for physics? This is an incredible time for physics. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. And it's all around this time. So Einstein's getting his Nobel Prize around this time. There's so much research going into physics. electromagnetism, radioactivity is just coming along, we're starting to get an understanding of the nuclear model, the atomic model, uh, quantum physics as a concept is starting to be recognised and be researched. So yeah, Max Planck taught here at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, um, Planck invited her to his home for nefarious reasons, but she already had a bit of a reputation because of these experiments that she'd done back in Vienna because of the work that she'd done at that event. to Rutherford's future work. Now, I think that means something different today than it did back then. Yeah. I should say up front, she never married, never had children. Interesting. Okay. So she's dedicated to the cause. Yeah, she really is. Yeah. Max Plank, I find it weird. He had twin daughters. but, didn't agree with women being admitted to university. It's so internalised, isn't it? It's, I don't understand how people can separate that type of love. Like, you either, to me, it's either all encompassing, unconditional, of course, and blind faith in a person, that yes, you can do that. I just, I can't. I don't understand when you can tear it apart. I love you, but I love you, but obviously you're never going to amount to anything and you don't deserve to achieve all of these things and you're not going to be capable purely because you're a woman. I wish I'd had sons. Like, he can't be saying that to his daughters, but I mean, he is saying that. He is, through his actions. Yeah, through his actions so this was quite an unexpected, in a sort of unexpected twist by Plank. He invited Lisa to attend his lectures. so she's fine. She's okay. She's okay. And at this time, actually, women weren't really allowed to attend lectures at the university. Despite her being a doctor. Despite her having a doctorate in physics. For heaven's sake. wasn't allowed. But she made friends with Plank, went along to his, lectures as an auditor, apparently, so not as a student, but as an auditor. Oh, so she was undercover. Uh, she loved his lectures, raved about them, uh, wanted to Do her own research and so approached Heinrich Rubens, who was in charge of Friedrich Wilhelm University. and he said that she could work in his lab. Crucially, he also said that there was someone in the Chemistry Institute, Otto Hahn, who was looking to collaborate with a physicist. And he's collaborated with female physicists before, during his time in Montreal. he'd studied radioactive substances So he needs, he needs a partner in this. Needs a buddy. Yeah. So here we go again with, oh yeah, she's an incredible woman. Yep. And we can have her here, but she can't do all of this other stuff. So she actually wasn't allowed into the main university. grounds, where she was supposed to be collaborating with Otto Hahn, but she wasn't allowed in the labs, because women weren't allowed in the labs. I don't know, maybe thought their hair would set on fire or something. Yeah, I immediately thought she would burst into flames. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So, The head of chemistry there set up a former woodworking shop for Otto and Lisa to use. She had the advantage that it had a separate entrance that you could get to without having to go through the university. So she could work in this woodworking shop, but they couldn't really do experiments there. Um, yeah, of course, it's a woodworking shop. It's a woodworking shop, you can't do nuclear experiments there. Pick a Bunsen burner in the corner, off you go. The toilets were in the university. She wasn't allowed in the university. So, if she wanted to go to the loo, she had to go to a restaurant down the street. bless her. Just this sort of thing. Eventually, they did install toilets, but then there was uproar from a lot of the chemistry department. So, the chemistry department there were really, the whole, not happy about a woman being admitted to do research. I wonder how she felt because she's proved herself so many times over by this point Yeah, like I know she's still relatively early on in her career by the sounds of it But like she's got a doctorate. She's done those exams. She's had a really strong success With the experiment where she could conclude something that a man couldn't and I wonder how must be heartbreaking every time she really thought about it. Yeah, and the passion for what she was doing must be higher than that though. I just find it utterly heartbreaking. Yeah, it is. It's a really hard listen, isn't it? Yeah, and this, I mean, this is in 1913, so seven years after she's got her doctorate. So she's, She's seasoned. Yeah, she's experienced and respected amongst some people. It's just like that, the old guard of the, I imagine, the sort of smoky rooms of 19th century. scientists who have never had to really speak to a woman in their time apart from checking that the children are okay. It's elitism, isn't it? At this stage, both Meitner and Hahn are unpaid. Which is not untypical for the time and they live off allowances from their fathers. Hahn sort of becomes a professor, in early 1907. Meitner doesn't. You know, they're working on the same things. But Han's work, they work together on atomic processes, nuclear processes, radiation, and they're detecting tiny, tiny amounts of particular isotopes of particular elements that they're trying to detect through radioactivity. And this is really, Sort of cutting edge stuff. And so they're dismissed by a lot of the other chemists in the department. So not only is like she dismissed for being a woman, but she's dismissed because of the kind of work that she's doing. But, The physics department was much friendlier. Yay! Much friendlier, much more welcoming. Correct. And she became really good friends with a lot of the physicists there, including Max Planck. And some others that hadn't heard of before. were really great We've run out of names to drop to be fair. I think I have actually, yeah. Yeah. Oh, and Einstein comes up later. What? Yeah. So, during these first few years that, Meitner and Hahn were working together, they co authored nine papers. but they were interested in slightly different aspects of the same process, as you might expect from a chemist and a physicist. Hahn was concerned with discovering new elements and like, Ooh, something's happened. So you have these decay chains where it goes from this element to this element this element, which is also radioactive, and that decays into this element, and you're sort of stepping down, and these elements are gradually losing mass, turning into other elements. Hahn's main focus was in discovering these new elements, and filling in. At the time, the periodic table still has gaps in it. So you look at a periodic table now, and the numbers go up nicely, and they're all brilliantly grouped together, and we don't have any gaps in between. the elements that we know about. We may discover heavier elements in the future. I see. At this point there were still gaps in there and he wanted to fill those gaps in. And it was tidy. He's tidy, yeah. Whereas, uh, Lisa was more interested in understanding the radiation that they gave off and how this radiation worked. In 1912, both of them move to the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. Oh my god, the times. So, yeah. The times that are ahead. 1912 Kaiser Wilhelm, oh god. Um, Um, Okay, let's go, let's, uh, let's learn.

audio1947845591: 18:20

It's an institute for chemistry. Hahn accepts an offer. He becomes a junior assistant in charge of a section. he gets the title of professor. He gets a salary equivalent to about 30, 000 euros. the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute is a private institution. It doesn't have a policy excluding women. Loopholes. But it won't, it won't pay her. So she works as a guest. Still supported by her father. Supported by her father until he dies. Ooh. So she's Not got support and She's not getting paid for the work that she's doing on equal footing with her same age scientific partner So worried that she'd have to basically go back home. Max Planck, name drop And appoints her as his assistant, where she goes through marking papers, basically, of his students. So assistant is the absolute lowest run on the ladder, but she's got something, she's got some salary to get by on, she can continue doing her research, and she's actually in the whole of Prussia. Prussia. She is the first female scientific assistant. I mean, it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because she's, it's great. That's amazing. And a very cool thing for him to do. But Otto wasn't, having to find the time to mark the papers. I know, right? Yeah. I'm finding it really difficult with, Lisa to sort of get my head around how respected she seems to be. And yet they treat her like shit. Trickster position, isn't it? Yeah, because like she's presented to Wilhelm at the opening of this institute. So he comes along to open the institute and they proudly push her in front of him to meet the Kaiser. do you think they're tokenism? Well, maybe, yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure it is tokenism, because all of these, like for Plank to appoint her, to be so worried about losing her, that he gives her any job he can just to keep her there. So I think she really is well respected, and they are equally, hamstrung by the system. There is gradually change. So a year after this, she becomes an associate. Title wise, she's on the same level as Han now, but her salary is still far less. And they actually renamed the laboratory. So it was originally the Han Laboratory. It's now the Han Meitner Laboratory. So they are gradually recognising. It's funny. It's a funny one to navigate. But they still pay, they still pay us loads less. Anyway, sort of money wise, it all comes good because one of the isotopes they discovered earlier on, a thorium isotope, it turns out it's very useful for medical purposes and so they get royalties from the production of that. I know, 1914, they get about 400, 000 euros, the equivalent just in that one year from the royalties of production of this isotope that they discovered. I'm worried I might push you over the edge with this. Um, in a show of great and equality, uh, Han gives Meitner 10 percent of the royalties. yeah, he keeps 90%, gives her 10%. He gives 90%, Simon! What? Is that because he was like, focused on the tidying? He was like, well, I'm discovering she was focused on the by products, do you think? Maybe, but it was Poor woman. I know. Oh, wow. So she got, what's 10 percent of that? So she got like 40, 000 maybe. Yeah. So it's something, it's a couple of years. She can eat. Salary. Yeah. Be grateful. again, she keeps getting offered these different academic positions around the place because she's so well respected. That's just bonkers. Plank, once again, doesn't want her to leave. Um, so This Plank guy, flying the flag. And they eventually moved to new accommodation, because it turns out doing radioactive experiments in a woodshop is not a good idea. We're in World War One now, 1914. Things are heating up. Yeah, things are really heating up. She gets called up to active duty, trains as an x ray nurse. Does she? That's fascinating. Joins the Austrian army, and yeah, as a nurse for a year or so before she's discharged in 1916. After she's discharged, in 1917, so World War I is still going on and she returns to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. and she is appointed as the head of her own section. She then gets her own physics section. and the, what was the Hahn Meitner Laboratory, is now two separate laboratories, the Hahn Laboratory and the Meitner Laboratory. Then together they discover a new element. Ooh. So they filled in one of the gaps. They name it protactinium. Protactinium. which is a name that Lisa suggested. she eventually becomes a professor in 1926, the first female university physics professor in Germany. Nice. And is a magnet for scientists from around the world. Scientists from around the world want to come and study with her. Because she's doing this groundbreaking research. And she's really got a name for herself at this point. But we're heading into the 30s. So it's 1933 that Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. And They institute a law, the law is called, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which removes all Jews from the civil service, and this includes academia. And although she is not a practicing Jew at this point, she is still Jewish. Yeah. And manages to hang on for a couple of years, but is eventually dismissed. So these were, they were trying to get her out, sort of by name, her and Hahn were still in charge, but their assistants were both members of the Nazi party and were both being given more and more control, more and more influence over the running of this institute. Fast forward to 1938, then she's got a real problem. It's called Anschluss. Another one. Which is, uh, yeah. Another problem. Another problem. Yeah, something called Anschluss. So this is where Germany annexed Austria, on the 12th of March 1938. And so at this point she loses her Austrian citizenship. so she's no longer officially an Austrian citizen. She's a Jew in Germany. It's so scary. What do you do? It's terrifying. Being stripped of your citizenship, can you imagine? Oh, it's awful, isn't it? I mean, what do you do from there? You've got I know! That's just what I was thinking, like, where do you go? Where do you turn? You know? Yeah. What next? You're not eligible for anything anywhere. Anywhere! And completely somebody else decided that on you. they chose Yeah. Your fate. Yeah. My heart goes out to her, it really does. Not in a pitying way. I don't want to feel like we're pitying her, but she did not have it easy. She really didn't, no. I mean, in a sense, there were a lot of people in World War II. obviously who were far worse off than her and you just, look at sort of Irina Sendler's episode and what she was dealing with the, the ghettos in Poland. And in a sense, Lisa was quite lucky because she knew At the time, in their field, these quite powerful people, so people like Niels Bohr, he was rich enough to have a holiday home, these were long established professors, they were celebrities of the scientific world, they had higher level contacts, and fortunately they were working to get her out of the country. So Niels Bohr offered her this lecturing job, but Denmark wouldn't recognize her Austrian passport as valid, so it wouldn't give her a visa to travel there. she couldn't leave for there, she couldn't leave for Switzerland, on 4th of July of that year, 1938, it was confirmed that academics wouldn't be granted permission to travel abroad. So initially other countries weren't letting her in. Now Germany wasn't letting her leave. And again, this story for me is just full of these strange paradoxes and juxtapositions where on the one hand, Nazi Germany wants to eradicate the Jews, on the other hand, they want their scientific knowledge. Knowledge is power, isn't it? I guess that's a theme we're coming to. Um, four people together, Niels Bohr, Peter Debbier, another fellow called Costa and another fellow called Fokker, wanted Meitner to be able to come to the Netherlands. Yeah. spoke to one of the heads of the border guards. And he had a friend who was a local politician from the border area through which they thought she might be able to gain entry. And so he petitioned this politician spoke directly to the guards on the border to basically when she comes past looking for entry whistle and look the other way. Don't ask any questions about her, And so the, there was a plan, to basically smuggle her out the country. And the plan involved her turning up to work at a normal time. doing her work, leaving at about eight o'clock. She only packed summer clothes. She only had the equivalent of about 40 pounds on her, but they gave her, a diamond engagement ring. So if she did get into trouble, she could try bribing or sort of pawning it for money or something. And also, um, it would make her look like she was married. Yes. She spent the night at Han's house and then went to a railway station and met this person called Costa. They made a public show of pretending to have met by chance and then travelled together to a railway station on the border and then from that railway station they crossed the border. without any incident. This got her into the Netherlands. This is so smart, by the way. It's just, and I love the detail how many people that took. She must have lots of interpersonal skills to get all these people on board. she must have been able to sell herself. And it's an international operation. Deception involving politicians and border guards. You listed so many people in that one moment. They all would have had to have spoken to her at some point or had recognition of who she was at some point. Very impressive. And this fellow, Costa, discovered, an element called hafnium. Uh huh. And another physicist, Pauli, famous for the Pauli Exclusion Principle, wrote a telegram to Costa and informed him he was now as famous for the abduction of Lisa Meitner as he was for the discovery of hafnium. Oh my gosh, I love that. a little later, Sweden, had actually granted her permission officially to enter Sweden on her Austrian passport. So she wasn't spending much time in the Netherlands, that was just to get her out of Germany. And then she moved on to Sweden. Meanwhile, another deception. Han had told everyone at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, because they were asking, Oh. Where's Lisa gone? He said that she'd gone home to Vienna to visit her relatives. So while this was going on, while she was doing all of this traveling, He was sort of doing the deception back there. He's kind of redeemed himself, hasn't he, Han? He's had a bit of redemption. She's not allowed any of her belongings. The Germans refused to send any of her belongings out of the country. So she's She has just got two suitcases of summer clothes and 40 bucks and a diamond ring. And she's starting afresh then in, in Sweden. so the big thing. We haven't done the big thing. We haven't done the big thing. So the big thing, Han is still back in Germany. And he's conducting some experiments trying to find new elements. And he's taking some uranium, famously friendly uranium, and bombarding it with, you know, neutrons and see what happens. Is he okay? Is he having a rough time? What's going on with Han? Has anyone spoken to Han lately? Yeah. So the way that Han's been working on, um, investigating these nuclear processes is looking at the decay of radioactive elements and seeing that they start off heavy, they decay, by decaying they lose some of their mass. And something lighter comes out, and that lighter thing is radioactive. It loses some mass, it becomes another, the next lighter element or isotope, and down it goes. You eventually get to a point where it's no longer radioactive. So it doesn't decay past a certain point. Yeah, It's got nothing more to lose, it's stable. It's stable, got it. So he is, um, doing some experiments where he's bombarding these uranium nucleus nuclei with neutrons and seeing what happens. And he's thinking, oh, maybe I can, because he's, he's on the search for element 93. Um, and he's thinking, you might find it. That sounds like a children's book, the search for element 93. It's like Catch 22, the sequel. But he sees something odd in that he bombards this uranium with a neutron, and then he does some chemistry tests on the resulting atoms to find out what it is, and he's left with barium. Now barium has got like 40 percent of the mass of uranium, so he's thinking this isn't fitting with the model of gradually stepping down in mass that we've seen before. Something else, particularly strange, is happening and they don't know the means of radioactive decay by which this can happen. It's going way further than it should and it's happening way more quickly than it should. Normally you've got to wait for the half life of each one that you get to. So the half life, it could be seconds, it could be days, and you just sort of wait for it to decay and get lighter and then you test it and see what you're left with. Um, but this is like 60 percent lighter. He's baffled, So he wrote to, Lisa, with these results, and was like, I don't know what the hell's happening here. And she's quoted as saying That's nice that he reached out, that's really cool. So they're still in touch across all of this time. Um, she Writes back to him say at the moment the assumption of such a thoroughgoing breakup seems very difficult to me The nuclear physics we have experienced so many surprises that one cannot unconditionally say it is impossible Honey's they're thinking. I must have made a mistake. My experiments gone wrong. This result can't be right. Mine is like She's open to it. Yeah the thing that she isn't open to and that she completely dismisses is the Also Honda's messed up She doesn't accept, she's so confident in the quality of his work that she doesn't think he's made an error in the discovery of barium. Oh come on, this is adorable. Yes, yes, yes. Of course it's not you, we all need that person at work. Of course it's not you. So along with, uh, a family member, I think nephew of hers, who is, who also happens to be a physicist. As a thing, family business. Family business, yeah. They sit down and have a think of how it could be possible. Um, basically in order for, if Han hasn't messed up and what he's done is split the atom. Bloody hell. And so they consider how this could be possible. And how he's done it, and how in the past they've never had sufficient energy to chip away more than a tiny bit. If you imagine a massive boulder, they've just been there with a little chisel on the outside and they've taken off a proton or an electron, just a tiny tiny bit, and it's all these lots of little chips. But what he's done is thrown a ping pong ball at a boulder. And the thing is cracked in half. Yep. Yeah. So they come up with this model, um, that they call the liquid drop model of the nucleus. Her family member, Frisch, so Meitner and Frisch, discussed this while sat down on a tree trunk, having been on a walk in the snow. Yeah, this is where the best thinking happens. Yeah, right. When you said earlier, like, they sat down to have a think, I was like, I could totally picture that. Like, I could totally picture that. Well, we just need to think about this, plonk. Yeah, a nice little detail is that when they were in the snow, uh, Frisch had his skis on, uh, Lisa was insistent that she would be just as fast as him without. Nice. And she was. So she was on foot. I love her. I love her. I love her. Yeah. so they did some calculations. Just to see if it was plausible that this could possibly have happened. And they decided it was possible, but they didn't know where the energy was coming from to drive them away. Um, so this energy, there must have been energy, and this energy would have just appeared, and how can you create energy? Well, you can't create energy, you can transform it, and the transformation of that is Einstein's equation, E equals mc squared, where energy is the mass times the speed of light squared, and they basically went through, doing some more calculations, and found that Theoretically in this they would lose enough mass which would give the exact amount of energy that they would need to repel These two are parked at the speed that they were seeing in the experiment and leave them with the barium that they were expecting. So they, Meitner and Frisch, had gone through and interpreted Han's results in the correct way. Rather than thinking, oh, he must be wrong, they had come up with the mechanism and proven it mathematically. Meitner and Frisch come up with some more experiments to, give a bit more meat to their claims, and they publish a paper. Hahn publishes his own paper, one part of it on 6th of January, part on the 10th of February, 1939. Frisch and Meitner publish their paper a day 11th of February. And the scientific community goes crazy because this is the first example, the discovery, of what Meitner has termed, what Lisa has termed, nuclear fission. And nuclear fission, this splitting apart of atoms, the cascade effect of which you see in a nuclear bomb. Yeah. Releases colossal amounts of energy very, very quickly. The controlled splitting of which is what powers nuclear reactors. That's why you have fuel rods and you have control rods that absorb some of the things that are split off so that they don't then create a cascade reaction. This is world changing. Yeah, and it's this that then fires off the further investigation into, oh, that's a lot of energy that's been released. We've just converted mass to energy. Maybe we can make a bomb out of it. Um, it's that. Because that's your first thought, obviously. It's the first thought, obviously. It's the first thing is like, how can I use this to destroy things? Yeah. And now that nuclear fission is a concept, I recommend you watch Oppenheimer, the movie, and that will tell you in much better detail. Um, the rest of the story gives us nuclear reactors, but Lisa doesn't want anything to do. She's absolutely horrified by the idea. that they would make a bomb out of this. She's offered a place to work with the British team on the Manhattan Project, and she just tells them to do one. Then 1945 the royal swedish academy of sciences Announced that Otto Hahn had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei. Seriously? Yeah. Otto, he's fallen off again. Otto's going through quite the character arc. He did a thing. He did a thing. And was baffled by it. She figured out exactly what had happened. Yeah. And told him where to look for more information and designed the experiments that he then wrote up in a paper and got the Nobel Prize for. Did he allude to, like, anybody else? I don't think he mentioned her in his speech. He basked. Basked in his own glory. Hmm. Yeah. Quite the villain in the end, Otto. I first came across Lisa because I was looking for, female scientists who should have got a Nobel Prize. Oh my god, I could just do a whole series on these. It's devastating how often this has happened, so look out for season two. Yeah. in her career, Lisa was nominated 49 times for Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. That's great. Yeah, we don't know her name. 49 times. 49. Gosh. It's like a lifetime of nominees, isn't it? Yeah. She's like the Beyonce of chemistry. She's the Beyonce, yeah. but she, there was controversy at the time that she wasn't mentioned. Her fellow physicists weren't happy. Yeah, its of why, but it's just not being a dick, isn't it? It's like, yeah. And then this is what a lot of these stories boil down to. don't be a dickhead. Yeah.

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Did she ever reference the fact that she didn't get any recognition? Did Lisa? So I think she was quite upset by that. Well, upset by it all, really. And like, throughout she was generally upset. And it's like you were saying earlier, that her passion for the work outweighed her, how much she begrudged the situation that she was in and the treatment that she got. And it was just Another not entirely unexpected snub. And they named element 109 as my nerium in her honor. Yeah. Yay! That's cool. One of the elements that I guess Otto Hahn wishes he could have discovered was then named after her. Yeah, he didn't tidy up that one, did he? No. Serves you right, Otto. I think hers is the only, Minerium is the only element heavier than Uranium named after a woman where the woman is not, from fiction. Wow, that's so depressing. Because the other, like all the other ones are from mythology. Oh, right. Oh, Simon. Well, that's a cool fact though. You could whip that out at a pub quiz, couldn't you? really sure what the conclusion is here. The conclusion is just like, really depressing. No, come on. She achieved so much. All those nominations. And I think my conclusion from it is that knowledge is power, like, she positioned herself during the most turbulent time of the 20th century in a position where she was required and needed and actually her, Her legacy after that just proves it. it just sucks that she didn't get an easier ride. Imagine how, how much more she could have achieved if she was given the same ride as Alto or anybody else in that situation. Yeah. And. Like if she didn't have to have a second job. Well, she's got a crater on the moon named after her. Has she? Yeah. Oh. I wonder how she felt. Oh. Okay. Thanks very much. Yeah, thanks. It's a crater on Venus named after her. An asteroid. Why are these craters? An institute in Berlin. Element 109 that we've covered. Yeah. Um, there's a biannual Lise Meitner Prize for excellent research in nuclear science. Love that. There's a Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award, that's awarded annually to a scientist who's made a breakthrough in physics. Mm hmm. building at the Free University of Berlin that was once the Klaus Wilhelm Institute, and had been known as the Otto Hahn building since 1956. That is a slap in the face. It's a real slap, isn't it? Was renamed to the Hahn Meitner building. Oh, okay. Okay. So he stayed. He stayed. I thought he was replaced initially. But, he hasn't got a statue. She's got a statue, um, in the garden of Humboldt University in Berlin, next to similar statues of Hermann von Helmholtz and Max Planck. Yay! Planck's back for the end. So their friendship endured. Yeah. Oh. Oh, well, what a story. Thank you. Yeah. Lisa might know all three and a half hours of her Well thanks everyone, thanks for listening. Oh yeah, thanks folks. Thanks. I'm Simon. I'm Vicky, and this has been She Changed History. If you enjoyed it, please let us know and let other people know. through rating and subscribing and sharing. If you want us to cover a particular person, let us know at shechangedhistoryatgmail. com. or if you just want to shout about how amazing the women in your lives are, like don't feel like they have to be, famous women or anything, just shout. We'd love to hear your stories. Definitely. And I'm pretty sure we'll have an episode next week as well. Yep. So we'll see you. Thanks everyone. See you soon. Thanks. Bye. Bye