Today, November 7th, is the birthday of two prominent women in Physics. Happy birthday to Marie Curie and Lisa Meitner! Marie Curie (1867-1934) One of the most famous woman physicists, she had a huge impact in the field of radioactivity. Her work in discovering, isolating, and studying both radium and polonium resulted in a Nobel Prize in Physics (along with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel) in 1903, and a sole Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only one to have won it twice, become a professor at University of Paris, and be entombed in the Paris Panthéon for herself. Lisa Meitner (1878-1968) A prominent woman in nuclear physics, she was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission by coming up with the liquid-drop nuclear model, which explained the origin and energy production of nuclear fission. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry however, was awarded only to Otto Hahn in 1944. Meitner was a prime example of women being overlooked by the Nobel committee. The element 109 is named in her honour, meitnerium.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 20:06:25 +0000
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