Article By Neha Gupta
The systematic underrepresentation of women in STEM is a global problem. Social definitions of gender and their associated roles have become normalized in our time and space, leading to the gendering of things ranging from colors and types of clothing to careers and lifestyles. This type of practice is naturally harmful, as it leads to the exclusion of competent individuals from participating in activities due to aspects of their identity - like gender - that they cannot control.
To tackle the global issues we are currently facing, we need more innovation and expertise in STEM. Though it is more important than ever for more individuals to take up jobs in STEM, social dictations of who can participate in STEM are limiting our global capacity. Looking at the metric of gender, only 28% of the STEM workforce is female with an overwhelming number of women and girls known to stop taking STEM classes in high school. While this number is very low, it was made possible to have these women in STEM because of past trailblazers. It is so important that we tell the stories of women who have pushed past barriers so as to encourage other women to break their respective glass ceilings and prove women’s competency.
Lise Meitner was one of these trailblazing women in STEM. Known and quite historically overlooked for her contributions to nuclear physics, Meitner was called the “German Marie Curie” by Albert Einstein. Born in 1878 in Vienna, Meitner grew up in a family of academics and pursued her doctorate degree in physics from the University of Vienna. Meinter was the first woman to be admitted into physics lectures and laboratories in the University; in earning her culminating doctorate in 1906, she reportedly became the second ever woman to earn a physics doctorate.
Following World War One, Meitner began working with Chemist Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and was framed to be working under Hahn as an unpaid “guest”. Meitner would go on to discover the modern “Auger Effect” in 1922, which was then identified in 1923 by French physicist Pierre Victor Auger and was named after him instead (1).
Meitner was a Jewish woman living in Nazi Germany at this point in time, and thus was confronted with increasing hostility. She left Nazi Germany fearing the risk of persecution in 1938 and settled in Sweden. In December 1938, Meitner was visiting her nephew Otto Fritsh. While on a hike together, the two were discussing a result of Uranium forming Barium after bombardment of particles, a result Meitner’s previous co-researcher Otto Hahn had written to them about, when the two worked out the concept of “Nuclear Fission”.
1939 was thus filled with many papers and publications about nuclear fission by Meitner, Hahn, Frisch and Fritz Strassmann (Otto Hahn’s co-researcher). Meitner and Frisch published a paper in Nature describing nuclear fission, with Hahn and Strassman producing their own separate papers (both disregarding Meitner’s role in the discovery) on the principle. In 1944, Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission; with this win, acknowledgement of Meitner’s role in the discovery was lost (2).
For Meitner, recognition of her work depended on the progressiveness of society. This meant much of the injustices she faced earlier in her life were not attempted to be reconciled by institutions and award panels until later in her life. For her work in nuclear physics and the application of nuclear fission to the atomic bomb, Meitner was invited to work on the Manhattan Project, which she declined (she was saddened to see her discovery being used to create destructive weapons). In 1966, some of the “Nobel mistake” was rectified in Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman being given the Enrico Fermi Prize for the discovery of Uranium fission. Meitner passed away in 1968, having lived long enough to see growing recognition for women in STEM. Her tombstone reads “A physicist who never lost her humanity.” The radioactive element Meitnerium (Mt) was posthumously named after her in 1982.
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