Lise Meitner ( Austria 1878-Inglaterra 1968) foi unha física austriaca, descobridora da fisión nuclear, un logro polo que o seu compañeiro Otto Hahn recibiu o premio Nobel en 1944. Este é un exemplo do desprezo do Comité Nobel ós traballos realizados por mulleres. Ata que o Goberno permitiu oficialmente que as mulleres poderan acceder á universidade tivo que desenvolver o seu traballo nun sótano. Despois de doctorarse, en 1907, comezou a traballar no instituto químico de Berlín, onde coñeceu a Otto Hahn, que se convertiu no seu compañeiro de investigacións.
Cando os nazis chegaron ó poder, Lise, xudía, tivo que fuxir a Suecia. Dende alí continuou o seu traballo, a través de cartas con Hahn, e dende a distancia deuse de cointa de que o núcleo do átmo se dividía, liberando enerxía. Ela nunca quixo voltar a Alemania e Hahn recibiu o Nobel polo seu traballo, aínda que o seu nome non foi esquecido: dous anos antes de morrer recibiu o premio Enrico Fermi, en Estados Unidos, polas súas contribucións á Física. Tivo outros recoñecementos e o elemento 109 da táboa periódica, dous cráteres (un na Lúa) e un asteroide levan o seu nome.
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Lise Meitner was born on November 7, 1878, in Viena, Austria. The third of eight children of a jewish family, she entered the University of Viena in 1901, studying physics under Ludwig Boltzmann. After she obtaines her doctorate degree in 1906, she went to Berlin in 1907 to study with Max Planck and the chemist Otto Hahn. She worked together with Hahn for 30 years. Hahn and Meitner collaborated closely, studying radioactivity, with her knowledge of physics and his knowledge of Chemistry. In 1918, they discovered the element protactinium.
After Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, Meitner was forced to flee Germany for Sweden. she continued to work in an institute in Stockholm but with little support. Hahn and Meitner met clandestinely in Copenhagen in November to plan a new round of experiments. The experiments that provided the evidence for nuclear fission were done at Hahn's laboratory in Berlin and published in January 1939. In February 1939, Meitner published the physical explanation for the observations and, with her nephew, physicist Otto Frisch, named the process nuclear fission.
In 1944, Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his research into fission, but Meitner was ignored, partly because Hahn downplayed her role ever since she left Germany.
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