Worst example ever of blatant sexism and racism by the committee, claim critics
Today I bring you the rather sad story of Lise Meitner , co-discoverer, with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, of nuclear fission. Hahn won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for this discovery, but Meitner was omitted from recognition. Critics of this decision claim it was the worst example ever of blatant sexism and racism by the Nobel committee.
Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1936 and passed a law banning Jews from the civil service. Although initially exempt from the ban, partly because of her military service during the first World War, Meitner was increasingly harassed by the Nazis and she fled to Stockholm in 1938 where she continued her research, corresponding and collaborating fruitfully with Hahn and his junior chemist colleague Fritz Strassmann in the KWI.
She proposed that atomic nucleus surface tension weakens as its charge increases, dropping towards zero as the atomic charge gets very high – the large uranium nucleus has a positive charge of 92. This very low surface tension allows the nucleus to split into two fragments when struck by a neutron.
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