Harris & Ewing on Wikimedia

The Nobel Prize in physics is the highest honor for scholars, awarded to people who make only the most outstanding discoveries. However, unfortunately, the woman responsible for one of the most major discoveries in the field of physics in the 20th century never received one. 

The Nobel Committee may be a group of smarty-pants physicists, mathematicians, and scientists, but that doesn't mean they don't make mistakes. Today, it's generally agreed that one such mistake was never awarding Lise Meitner a Nobel Prize. 

Who was Lise Meitner?

Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist and a pioneer in the field of nuclear physics. She was the first woman to become a full physics professor in Germany. She was so brilliant that Einstein called her "the Marie Curie of Germany," but her career was impeded by sexism and anti-semitism. She worked as an X-ray nurse during WWI, during which time she became increasingly concerned about the rise of nazism and anti-semitism in Germany. After she finished her studies, she moved to Berlin, where she began collaborating with chemist Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Despite being highly qualified, Meitner initially had to work unpaid and without access to laboratories because she was a woman. She also began teaching at the University of Berlin, but was fired in 1933 because both her parents were Jewish. In 1938, she fled Nazi occupation, escaping to Sweden, where she began working at the Nobel Institute for Physics. 

Discoveries

IAEA Imagebank on Wikimedia

Along with Hahn, she discovered a new element on the periodic table, protactinium, in 1917. Later, Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann conducted experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons, realizing the uranium nucleus had split into two, creating a huge amount of energyInin 1939, Meitner and Hahn were the first to explain the process, calling it nuclear fission. This formed the foundation of nuclear reactions, later used in atomic bombs and electricity generation. 

Nobel Prize controversy

Bryn Mawr College on Wikimedia

In 1944, Otto Hahn alone was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Over her entire career, Meitner was nominated 48 times for a Nobel Prize, mostly by her contemporaries and mentors who recognized her genius. However, she never received one. Many notable physicists at the time were Jewish, including Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, but few other scientists faced that same unique blend of challenges Meitner did. Not only was she of Jewish descent during WWII, but she was a woman, too. 

Unlike many of her colleagues, Meitner refused to contribute to the development of nuclear weapons, though her research indirectly provided some of the crucial elements. She also declined positions because of disparaging attitudes towards women or Jewish people. She never returned to Germany but continued her work in Sweden, quietly breaking ground while her male contemporaries reaped the rewards. 

Sadly, her story is far from the only one. Marietta Blau, Hedwig Kohn, and Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber were just a handful of other trailblazing female Jewish scientists who were snubbed by the Nobel Committee. Only five women have ever received the Nobel Prize for Physics, three of them being within the last decade. 

Despite never being awarded the Nobel Prize, she received many honors later in life, including the Enrico Fermi Award, which she shared with Hahn and Strassmann, and the element meitnerium was named in her honor in 1997.