Women’s Heritage Month part I

This month is Women’s Heritage Month when we are asking Bloggers to contribute articles long or short, about women who have made a special contribution to humanity or who have inspired or empowered women. It would be particularly interesting if readers could post articles about women who have inspired them personally. They needn’t be famous people. It could be that the person who has inspired you is the woman across the street. For more information please contact Kimmie or Camille who are organising this initiative. To set the ball rolling here is my contribution:

In common with most children my parents read me stories. However with a scientist as a father he inevitably also told me stories about great scientists. Few were women, but one eventually became my personal heroine. Her story of personal grit and determination in overcoming adversity and prejudice has few to equal it. It is a story that embodies hope and goodness as well as remorse, stifling self-interest, academic hubris and frightening political manipulation that finally put Armageddon in the hands of man.

When I was younger I frequently set myself what I thought to be impossibly high goals. There were times when I felt that I would fall far short and on more than one occasion was driven to cry with desperation and frustration. However, each time I was able to remind myself that all I had to do was gain mastery of my subject, whereas my heroine had faced the same challenge while handicapped by the burdens of race and gender related prejudice . Reminding myself of her struggle frequently helped spur me on and reminded me that my problems were small in comparison.



This is the photo I used to have on my computer desktop when I was a student.

Who was she? Well if her friend and contemporary Albert Einstein was the world’s greatest male scientist, then arguably she was the greatest woman scientist of all time. No! I’m not talking about the Nobel prize winner Marie Curie. I’m talking about Lisa Meitner. Never heard of her? It’s hardly surprising. That’s one of the problems when men write history, not that women do it much better, Nonetheless Lisa made possible one of the greatest discoveries of all time and yet was cheated out of a Nobel prize by men.

Lisa Meitner was born on the 7th November 1878 in Vienna. For any woman to make her way in science in the 19th and early 20th centuries was undoubtedly a singular triumph in an almost exclusively male profession. To do so as a Jewess in central Europe however really does underline her grit, determination, sheer capacity for hard work and brilliance.

The barriers to her becoming a scientist were enough to put any woman off from the beginning. In Vienna the special school that prepared students for university entrance was closed to women. So it wasn’t until 1897 when the ban was lifted that she could begin her science education. Lisa didn’t enter the University of Vienna until 1901. There inspired by her teacher, the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, Meitner studied physics and in 1906 became only the second woman to obtain a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna . Following this she stayed on at university for an extra year to do research in the newly emerging field of radioactivity.

Following her doctoral degree, she rejected an offer to work in a gas lamp factory. However given the limitations on women’s careers. Lisa felt the best position she could obtain would be teaching science in a girl’s school, nevertheless she was determined to try for something better and persuaded her parents to subsidize a one year stay in Berlin.

When she arrived in Berlin she was introduced to a young man called Otto Hahn who was looking for someone to work with him. They liked each other and decided to work together. Otto had a post as an Assistant at the famous Emil Fischer’s Chemical Institute. An Assistant was basically what it said someone on the bottom rung of the ladder. The problem was Fischer’s Chemical Institute was off limits to women. Nevertheless, eventually a compromise was reached whereby Lisa could use a basement carpenter’s room that had a separate entrance onto the street. Here she built her laboratory. However, she was not allowed to enter the institute, not even to visit her co-worker Otto Hahn’s lab. To use the bathroom she had to walk to a nearby restaurant. When the famous scientist Rutherford visited on his way back from the 1908 Nobel prize ceremonies, he chatted with the men in Hahn’s laboratory while Lisa was delegated to take Rutherford’s wife shopping. Such were the times.

Despite considerable progress in her research Lisa remained unpaid and Fischer’s Chemical Institute stayed unwelcoming. However the physicists working nearby were made of sterner stuff and hearing of Lisa’s work they would often walk over to talk to her in her dark and dingy carpenter’s shop. One physicist in particular began to take an interest in her career, the famous scientist Max Planck the discoverer of the quantum.

So impressed was Planck he invited Meitner to attend his lectures, a rather unusual gesture as until then he had rejected women wanting to attend his lectures. Soon she became a friend of the Planck family and would visit them at the weekend and play the piano. Then Planck did an extraordinary thing. Like most men of the time he strongly believed that a woman’s place was in the home and yet despite this innate prejudice he also was a great believer in fairness irrespective of the cost to himself. He astounded everyone by making Lisa his Assistant. It was the turning point in Lisa’s career. Not only did she have a paid post for the first time, but it was with one of the most famous scientists of the age. In doing so she became the first woman Assistant in Prussia.

It is perhaps worth reflecting, that blind politically correct dogma today is often incapable of understanding that prejudiced people can also be good and unselfish. Many people today are often incapable of separating the two different things. Prejudiced people are not necessarily bad they are often simply unenlightened. Despite firmly believing that a woman’s place was in the home Planck was willing to recognise Lisa’s commitment and talent and put his own reputation on the line. Certainly Albert Einstein another of Planck’s contemporaries would not have stuck his neck in a similar manner.

It is also important although unfashionable to remember that in judging the past that we should use the values of the time not use today’s values and read backwards.



Humbled, within a year Fischer followed Planck’s lead and provided Lisa with a post in his department. The funds for research began to come in and before long Hahn and Meitner had a four room laboratory.Working together with the chemist Otto Hahn, Lisa discovered several new isotopes and in 1909 she presented two papers on beta-radiation. (to be continued)

It is almost impossible to tell Lisa's story without introducing a little science so for everyone who has forgotten the chemistry they learnt at school here is a gentle reminder:

Everything in the universe is made up of approximately one hundred basic materials called elements. You may remember them listed in a thing called the periodic table on the wall of the chemistry lab. For example we are mainly made up of the elements carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H).



Now elements are made up of very tiny building blocks called atoms. An atom is the tiniest particle of an element that can exist and each element has its own kind of atom.

Described simply atoms are made up of three incredibly tiny particles called electrons, protons and neutrons - sound familiar? The protons and neutrons carry virtually all the weight of the atom and are found in the dense core of the atom called the nucleus. Around which almost weightless particles called electrons whirl rather like the earth around the sun. In getting the approximate scales involved in an atom, if an atom was the size of a football pitch the nucleus would be the size of a pea.



The atoms of different elements simply differ from one another in the number of protons they have in the nucleus. For example all hydrogen atoms have one proton in the nucleus and all carbon atoms have six protons in the nucleus.

However the atoms of the same elements say hydrogen even though they all have one proton in the nucleus can have differing numbers of neutrons. These are known as isotopes. Hydrogen has three isotopes.



Finally before you feel completely bamboozled not all isotopes are stable, some fall apart and turn into atoms of other elements giving off radiation in the process (radioactivity)

Lisa's story will be continued shortly.