1938+Lise+Meitner

Lise Meitner discovered the radiationless transition known as the Auger affect, named after the French scientist Pierre Victor Auger who discovered the same thing two years later. She lived from 1878 to 1968 in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. She was the second woman to recieve a doctoral degree at the University of Vienna in physics. She studied under the teachings of Ludwig Boltzmann and after she recieved her degree she moved to Berlin in 1907. She went to Berlin to study with Max Planck and the chemist Otto Hahn. It was in 1923 that Lise discovered the Auger affect. In 1944 Hahn recieved the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into fission, but Lise was ignored partially because Hahn had downplayed her role in the research ever since she left Germany. After 1946 she was in the U.S. for a brief time where she was given total American press attention as a person who had "left Germany with the bomb in my purse." In 1906 Lise retired to Cambridge where she died October 27. In 1992 the element 109, the heviest element in the universe, was given the name Meitnerium (Mt) in her honor.

Sources: [] []