Lise Meitner - A Life in Physics

Abstract

ISBN: 0 520 08906 5 Lise Meitner was a major player in the development of radioactivity and nuclear physics in the first half of the 20th century. For more than thirty years she collaborated with Otto Hahn, she with expertise in physics, he with expertise in chemistry. The crowning moment of their joint efforts came with the discovery of fission in 1938. This took place a couple of months after Meitner had been forced to emigrate because of her Jewish ancestry and when the Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery, Hahn received it alone. Ruth Lewin Sime argues with great force that Lise Meitner's contribution was crucial and she lays bare the systematic way in which the Jew and woman Lise Meitner was discriminated against. Lise Meitner was born in Vienna in 1878 which meant that she was among the first women to attend school beyond the age of 14, to attend university, to get access to a laboratory, to receive a university degree and a doctorate. And all the time she countered the gender prejudices in a male environment, both in Vienna and Berlin where she moved in 1907. But here she gradually developed a fruitful research programme with Otto Hahn at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute. By 1917, she was appointed to establish a physics section within the KWI for chemistry. The author shows the interdependent work of physicist and chemist in the research on the atomic nucleus and how the asymmetry in credit was institutionalized: Meitner received lower pay and was always mentioned second in joint publications. In the 1920s, Meitner and Hahn worked on magnetic beam spectra. This field proved very important for the development of the knowledge about atomic nuclei, since the energy with which the beta particles were emitted yielded much of the first information about the energy states of nuclei. But the experiments were demanding: the decay series had to be disentangled and frequently complicated chemical separations had to be performed, while the notions of isotopy and nuclear particles were in flux in addition to the contemporary development of quantum mechanics. At least Hahn and Meitner were very well equipped at the KWI, both in terms of radioactive samples, apparatus and workshop technicians. From the beginning of the Third Reich (1933) until Meitner's emigration (1938), she and Hahn worked on neutron irradiations of nuclei which culminated in the discovery of fission. Where the primary reason for Meitner's discrimination had up to that point been gender, it now became race. The gradual intensification of harassments forced Meitner to emigrate at the age of 60 to a different culture without her belongings and with only a peripheral position in a new lab, lacking the material backup which she had enjoyed at the KWI. The author is particularly emphatic that although Hahn and Meitner corresponded about the experiments on fission, the political situation barred them from publishing jointly, and how the allocation credit after the even had been skewed as a result. Meitner and Hahn did grow apart in the years in which she was a Jewish emigré and he a scientist trying to cope with day-to-day life within National Socialism. At the end of the war, when the news of the atomic bomb reached the German POW physicists, Hahn had extra inducement to claim the discovery of fission for himself. This was explicitly associated with the purported peaceful intentions of German physics and juxtaposed with the American use of nuclear power against Japanese civilians. Thus, as Sime shows, the discovery of fission became a matter of national pride at a moment when Germans possessed precious little of that commodity. The fact that Lise Meitner never received the Nobel Prize (although she received a great many other distinctions) became tied up with the requirements of self-representation of German scientists. The book is a good read and it is salutary to read about the success of a woman in science against odds which were much more severe than they are now. The author stays close to the historical evidence (publications, diary, correspondence) which results in a story which is very close to Lise Meitner's views herself but short on the context. It would have been very useful, for instance, to learn more about the actual experimental work done at the KWI, about the development of instrumentation and how in some respects Meitner and Hahn were privileged over other researchers in less well-endowed institutions. And it must be said that this is a judgmental and indignant book. The job which the author has set herself is to allocate credit and blame, whether this be with regard to the Nobel Prize or participation/resistance to the Nazis. And it is at least questionable whether this is an appropriate task for the historian of science.