Physicist Lise Meitner
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Lise Meitner (1878-1968) overcame extraordinary odds to become one of the great physicists of the twentieth century. At a time when Austrian women were denied higher education and during a later time when Jews were persecuted and murdered, Meitner managed to obtain her doctorate and lead an extremely successful professional life. Her private life centered around her friends, many of them colleagues, and she did not marry or have, so far as is known, any romantic involvements. Politics and other circumstances denied her some of the rewards and the professional continuity that her achievement entitled her to enjoy. And, late in life, she was also distressed (even after having failed to get full credit for her role in the discovery of nuclear fission) to be identified with the development of the atomic bomb. Meitner, however, always said that she was very satisfied with her life. In spite of all the hindrances, injustices and misinterpretations, she had, as no one would have believed possible, lived a life devoted to physics. Her life's work was, as her biographer notes, "more a calling than a career" and Lise Meitner derived a great gratification and joy from her calling that few people ever experience (Sime, Life 12). Meitner was born in Vienna, the third of the eight children of Hedwig and Peter, a middle-class lawyer. The Meitners were a secular Jewish family who took no interest in the religion beyond registering the children with the Jewish community. Yet Philip
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Planck's assistant.
During these years Meitner formed many lifelong friendships among the scientists she met in Berlin. She was included as a member of the family, for instance, in the circles of James Franck and Planck himself. She visited her family in Vienna often and felt most at home there, but, as she said, "nevertheless I know that leaving home was in certain respects a salvation for me" (quoted in Sime, Life 38). In Berlin she had her work, which meant more to her than anything and she was free of family pressures to conform by marrying. Among the scientists who were her friends, her devotion to physics did not seem so unusual.
She also flourished professionally. Though her career was briefly interrupted when she volunteered as an X-ray technician in World War I, Meitner, finally horrified by the suffering on the Russian front, returned to work in Berlin. On resuming her career she was promoted to professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and made head of the physics section. From the very first Meitner had faced numerous hindrances and instances of professional discourtesy because of her gender. But it is a true sign of her great seriousness and extraordinary talents that, remarkably for the times, "her acade
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Approximate Word count = 1845
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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