A life’s work

The life of Lise Meitner and her greatest achievements as a trailblazing physicist

1878

Lise Meitner is born in Vienna, Austria, into a Jewish family.

1901

She joins the University of Vienna, where she discovers a fondness for physics and mathematics.

1906

Meitner is awarded her doctoral degree for her paper on the conduction of heat in inhomogeneous solids.

1907

Meitner joins forces with chemist Otto Hahn at the University of Berlin in the Chemistry Institute.

1919

After observing nuclear decay, she and Hahn discover a new element: protactinium.

1938

Meitner, along with Hahn and chemist Fritz Stresemann, split a uranium atom: nuclear fission is discovered.

1939

Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann publish the findings of the uranium experiments, but Meitner is not listed as an author.

1966

Meitner, Hahn and Strassmann are awarded the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award, recognising their discovery as a team effort.

1968

Meitner dies after declining health and a series of small strokes. Her gravestone reads, ‘A physicist who never lost her humanity’.