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Physicists Lise Meitner

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 Philipp Meitner never converted, although discrimination was very strong in the legal profession and "conversion was still a passport to judgeships and other civil service positions" (Sime, Life 6). Meitner herself converted to the Lutheran faith in 1908, the same year that her two older sisters converted to Catholicism. It is not known why she made the change but she remained interested in the "ethical teachings of the religion" for the rest of her life (Sime, Life...

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Physicists Lise Meitner. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:50, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694854.html