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Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

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Patricia Rife has made a scientific subject meaningful in the comprehensible biography: "Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age." This is a well researched and an acknowledgement of a woman's contribution to peace and medical technology. Lise Meitner devoted her life to research and was denied many Nobel Peace Prize awards because of her sex. This book is for every young woman, public library, high school library or anyone interested in an outstanding book of historic subjects. Special accolades to the author, Patricia Rife, for her professional treatment of this manuscript.

While there has been a recent renewed interest in the life of Lise Meitner, and a number of biographies have appeared, this I believe is the first one to focus on physics, as opposed to personalities. I may add that the authors do weave together an entangled web of scientists, their thoughts (through correspondence), their ambitions, and their (in many cases) flawed judgments. And the narrative is captivating!

Lise Meitner was born in Vienna in 1878, and she started her career in the turbulent times of the First World War, at a time when Germany was a clear leader in physics research, in the Golden Era of physics. Yet, Lise Meitner was the first woman German scientist; first PhD in physics. When she started her studies, German universities were almost entirely closed to women; and especially so in the sciences.
The authors bring to life the turbulent events in modern history which shaped Lise Meitner's career. A central theme in the book is the physics community's reaction to the first use by the USA of a fission bomb over Japan in 1945.

In Berlin, building on a decade of research by Meintner and Otto Hahn, in 1938, the three Lise Meitner, Hahn, and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission. The Nobel Prize went to Hahn alone, and Lise Meitner has until recently been largely forgotten. In this interesting book, the authors examine why. Readers may find that the reasons are different from what we might have guessed.

Many of the German scientists in the 1930ties were Jewish, or partly Jewish, and they were dismissed by Hitler in 1933, or in the years up to the war. The year before the outbreak of war in 1939 was the last chance to escape, and the entire physics community dispersed as German scientists had to flee, --- some chose to escape. A small number went to neutral Sweden, and others who had left earlier ended up in the USA, and became leaders in the Manhattan project, the secret Los Alamos team of scientists, led by Oppenheimer, the team which built the first atomic bomb. There were some German scientists, Otto Hahn among them who didn't have to flee. They included Lise Meitner's research collaborators, Hahn, and Strassmann, plus Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg. At the end of the war, their relationships resumed, and an examination (in the book) of private letters reveals some fascinating new insight. Palle Jorgensen, October 2005.

Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, by J.A. Wheeler is a fascinating book documenting the extraordinary life of an aspiring woman scientist whose life was filled with adversity. Surviving both World Wars and gender discrimination, Meitner was a pioneer at the forefront of her discipline involving the study of radio-elements and nuclear fission. At the University of Vienna and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Meitner was inspired to study experimental physics with a focus on atomic structure by her two most memorable professors Boltzmann and Planck. Meitner's major discovery was her work with Hahn and the splitting of the atom (nuclear fission). This monumental discovery led to the invention of the atomic bomb, which drastically changed warfare. Besides her accomplishments Meitner was a truly inspiring woman for her strength and personal conviction. Meitner barely escaped from Nazis Germany only to be isolated in Sweden from the international scientific community. She helplessly watched her lifetime of dedication and achievement be overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee countless times, only to have Hahn receive all the credit. In the face of the immanent destruction of her career and life by the Nazis she experienced the pain of being abandoned by close colleagues. Rising above her obstacles she dedicated her life to helping victims of the Holocaust and refusing to work on chemical warfare or nuclear bomb research, but instead working towards awareness of the moral responsibilities scientists needed to have in this new nuclear age.