Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Lise Meitner's background is described as Viennese Jewish; fled Germany in 1938. Growing up, the family was middle class — lawyer father; a cultured household that paid for private tuition when universities barred women. Worked years unpaid in a basement she wasn't allowed to leave by the front stairs; co-discovered nuclear fission.

Born

1878 · Vienna, Austria-Hungary

Roots

Viennese Jewish; fled Germany in 1938

Family

Middle class

Lawyer father; a cultured household that paid for private tuition when universities barred women.

Education

University of Vienna (second woman to earn a physics doctorate there)

Started with

Private tuition

Vienna's universities were closed to women; tutors prepared her for the exams once the law changed.

Affiliations & societies

None documented.

Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1. 1907 · age 28
   Berlin

   Max Planck lets her attend his lectures; she works with Otto Hahn in a converted woodshop, unpaid for years and barred from the main labs.

2. 1926 · age 47
   First woman physics professor in Germany

   At the University of Berlin.

3. 1938 · age 59
   Flees Germany

   The annexation of Austria strips her protection; colleagues smuggle her across the Dutch border.

4. 1938 · age 60
   Explains fission

   In Swedish exile, with her nephew Otto Frisch, interprets Hahn's barium results as the splitting of the nucleus — and names it.

5. 1943 · age 64
   Refuses the bomb

   Declines an invitation to join the Manhattan Project.

6. 1944 · age 66
   The Nobel goes to Hahn alone

   The chemistry prize omits her; the case remains a standard example of prize injustice.

7. 1997
   Meitnerium

   Element 109 is named for her, three decades after her death.