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cover of episode Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner

2025/6/5
logo of podcast In Our Time: Science

In Our Time: Science
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F
Frank Close
J
Jess Wade
M
Melvyn Bragg
S
Stephen Bramwell
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Jess Wade: 我认为莉泽·迈特纳是一位杰出的科学家，她出生在一个自由主义家庭，从小就对科学充满热情。尽管她面临着许多制度性的障碍，但她通过坚韧和才华克服了困难，并最终成为第一位女性物理学教授。然而，由于性别歧视和反犹太主义，她未能获得应有的认可，这令人感到非常遗憾。 Frank Close: 我认为莉泽·迈特纳在放射性研究方面做出了开创性的贡献。她与奥托·哈恩一起建立了放射性阶梯，并对原子核的结构和性质进行了深入的研究。尽管哈恩获得了诺贝尔奖，但迈特纳的贡献却被忽视了，这是一种不公正的待遇。我认为核裂变是在斯德哥尔摩树桩上发现的，迈特纳的洞察力是至关重要的。 Stephen Bramwell: 我认为莉泽·迈特纳是一位被低估的科学家。她在发现镤和解释核裂变方面做出了重要的贡献。尽管她受到了不公正的待遇，但她始终坚持自己的科学理想，并致力于将科学用于造福人类。我认为我们应该更多地了解她的故事，并承认她的科学贡献。 Melvyn Bragg: 莉泽·迈特纳在1938年圣诞节期间解决了核裂变的问题，她推断原子核像水滴一样分裂，并将其命名为裂变。这是一个关键的突破，但她最初并没有得到广泛的认可。

Deep Dive

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Lise Meitner's early life was marked by a passion for science and a supportive family that encouraged her academic pursuits. Despite facing significant gender barriers in Austria and Germany, she persevered, earning a PhD and eventually becoming the first woman physics professor in Germany. Her journey highlights the challenges women faced in pursuing scientific careers in the early 20th century.
  • Born in Vienna to a Jewish father, one of the first Jewish lawyers registered in Austria
  • Grew up in a liberal household where higher education was encouraged for all children
  • Was the second woman physicist to earn a PhD at the University of Vienna
  • Faced significant gender barriers in her scientific career, including underpayment and lack of recognition

Shownotes Transcript

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough over Christmas 1938 while she was sitting on a log in Sweden during a snowy walk with her nephew Otto Frisch (1904-79). Both were Jewish-Austrian refugees who had only recently escaped from Nazi Germany. Others had already broken uranium into the smaller atom barium, but could not explain what they found; was the larger atom bursting, or the smaller atom being chipped off or was something else happening? They turned to Meitner. She, with Frisch, deduced the nucleus really was splitting like a drop of water into a dumbbell shape, with the electrical charges at each end forcing the divide, something previously thought impossible, and they named this ‘fission’. This was a crucial breakthrough for which Meitner was eventually widely recognised if not at first.

With

Jess Wade A Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College, London

Frank Close Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College, University of Oxford

And

Steven Bramwell Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Professor of Physics at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965 (Allen Lane, 2025)

Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996)

Marissa Moss, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner (Abrams Books, 2022)

Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkhauser Verlag, 1999)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production