Editing Lise Meitner (section)

{{Short description|Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist (1878–1968)}}
{{Featured article}}
{{Use British English|date=January 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Lise Meitner
| image             = Lise Meitner NatGeo.jpg
| caption           = Meitner, {{Circa|1960}}
| birth_name        = Elise Meitner
| birth_date        = {{Birth date|1878|11|07|df=yes}}
| birth_place       = [[Vienna]], [[Austria-Hungary]]
| death_date        = {{Death date and age|1968|10|27|1878|11|07|df=yes}}
| death_place       = [[Cambridge]], England
| resting_place     = [[St James' Church, Bramley]], [[Hampshire]], England
| citizenship       = {{Plain list|
* Austria (until 1938)
* [[Statelessness|Stateless]] (1938–1949)
* Sweden (1949–1968)
}}
| alma_mater        = {{Plain list|
* [[University of Vienna]] ([[PhD]])
* [[University of Berlin]] 
}}
| known_for         = {{Plain list|
* Coining the name ''[[protactinium]]'' (1918)
* {{No wrap|[[Auger–Meitner effect]] (1922)}}
* Discovering [[nuclear fission]] (1938)
}}
| father            = [[Philipp Meitner]]
| relatives         = [[Otto Robert Frisch]] (nephew)
| awards            = {{Plain list|
* [[Lieben Prize]] (1925)
* [[Max Planck Medal]] (1949)
* [[Fellow of the Royal Society#Foreign member|ForMemRS]] (1955)
* [[Otto Hahn Prize]] (1955)
* [[Wilhelm Exner Medal]] (1960)
* [[Enrico Fermi Award]] (1966)
}}
| honours           = {{Plain list|
* [[File:D-PRU Pour le Merite 1 BAR.svg|25px]] [[Pour le Mérite#Civil class|Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts]] (1957)
* [[File:Order of Honour for Science and Art Rib.png|25px]] [[Austrian Decoration for Science and Art]] (1967)
}}
| fields            = [[Nuclear physics]]
| work_institutions = {{Plain list|
* [[Max Planck Institute for Chemistry|Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry]] (1912–1938)
* University of Berlin <br/> (1923–1933)
* [[Royal Institute of Technology]] (1947–1960)
}}
| thesis_title      = Prüfung einer Formel Maxwells (Examination of a Maxwell formula)
| thesis_year       = 1906
| doctoral_advisors = {{Plain list|
* [[Hans Benndorf]]
* [[Franz S. Exner]]
}}
| academic_advisors = {{Plain list|
* [[Ludwig Boltzmann]]
* [[Max Planck]]
}}
<!-- Not in article
| doctoral_students = {{Plain list|
* [[Nikolaus Riehl]] (1929)
* [[Gottfried von Droste]] (1933)
* [[Kan-Chang Wang]] (1934)
* [[Arnold Flammersfeld]] (1938)
}}
-->
| signature         = Lise Meitner signature.svg
}}

'''Elise {{No bold|"}}Lise{{No bold|"}} Meitner'''  ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|m|aɪ|t|n|ər}} {{Respell|MAHYT|ner}};<ref>{{Cite web|title=MEITNER Definition & Meaning|url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/meitner|website=[[Dictionary.com]]}}</ref> {{IPA|de|ˈliːzə ˈmaɪtnɐ|lang|De-Lise Meitner.ogg}}; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish [[nuclear physicist]] who was instrumental in the [[discovery of nuclear fission]].

Completing her [[doctoral]] research in 1906, Meitner became the second woman from the [[University of Vienna]] to earn a doctorate in [[physics]]. She spent much of her scientific career in [[Berlin]], where she was a physics professor and a department head at the [[Max Planck Institute for Chemistry|Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry]]. She was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany. She lost her positions in 1935 because of the [[anti-Jewish]] [[Nuremberg Laws]] of [[Nazi Germany]], and the 1938 [[Anschluss]] resulted in the loss of her Austrian citizenship. On 13–14 July 1938, she fled to the Netherlands with the help of [[Dirk Coster]]. She lived in [[Stockholm]] for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen in 1949, but relocated to Britain in the 1950s to be with family members.

In mid-1938, chemists [[Otto Hahn]] and [[Fritz Strassmann]] at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry demonstrated that [[isotope]]s of [[barium]] could be formed by [[neutron]] bombardment of [[uranium]]. Meitner was informed of their findings by Hahn, and in late December, with her nephew, fellow physicist [[Otto Robert Frisch]], she worked out the physics of this process by correctly interpreting Hahn and Strassmann's experimental data. On 13 January 1939, Frisch replicated the process Hahn and Strassmann had observed. In Meitner and Frisch's report in the February 1939 issue of ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'', they gave the process the name "fission". The discovery of nuclear fission led to the development of [[nuclear reactor]]s and [[atomic bomb]]s during [[World War&nbsp;II]].

Meitner did not share the 1944 [[Nobel Prize in Chemistry]] for nuclear fission, which was awarded to her long-time collaborator Otto Hahn. Several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust". According to the Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 30 times for the Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1967. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to attend the [[Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting]] in 1962. She received many other honours, including the posthumous naming of element 109 [[meitnerium]] in 1997. Meitner was praised by [[Albert Einstein]] as the "German [[Marie Curie]]."<ref name="wapost" />