Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

In this biography, the author interprets both the life and time of the female physicist Lise Meitner, providing a background to the scientific discoveries and social milieu which affected the research, events, personalities, and politics of 20th century quantum physics.

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This is an account of the drama surrounding the discovery of nuclear fission, which led directly to the development of the first atomic bomb by the Allies. The female physicist at the heart of the discovery was Lise Meitner (1878-1968), the first woman to earn a PhD in physics at the University of Vienna, a pioneer in the research of radioactive processes, and together with her nephew Otto R. Frisch, an interpreter of the process of nuclear fission in 1938. She was a colleague and friend of many of the "giants" of 20th century physics: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Niels Bohr amongst others. In 1945, her long-term partner Otto Hahn alone was awarded the Nobel Prize for work in which Meitner was directly involved before her secret escape from Nazi Germany. In this biography, the author interprets both the life and time of Lise Meitner, providing a background to the scientific discoveries and social milieu which affected the research, events, personalities, and politics of 20th century quantum physics.