Who Was Lise Meitner?

Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish scientist known for her discoveries of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie" for her long-time association with both physics and chemistry. In this post, let's take a look at 10 most amazing facts about Lise Meitner.

Collaboration with nephew

Lise Meitner became a role model for her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, who grew up becoming a physicist himself. Together, they hypothesized that the split of Uranium in two, explained the incredible energy release in "fission", a term Frisch coined.

Her role in World War I

Meitner was known for her compassion and modesty. During the World War I, when the situation required, she served as a nurse for two years. In 1916, she resumed her physics research.

Early education & PhD

Her earliest research work began at age eight, when she kept a notebook of her records underneath her pillow. She attended the University of Vienna at age 23 and became the second woman to receive a doctoral degree in physics in 1905.

Professorship & war

In 1926, Meitner accepted a post at the University of Berlin and became the first woman in Germany to become a full professor of physics. In 1938, at the start of World War II, she had to flee Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage.

Help by Bohr

Niels Bohr helped Lise escape Nazi Germany in 1938. She stayed with Niels and his wife, Margrethe Bohr, at their holiday house in Tisvilde, Denmark. Meitner fled to Sweden, where she lived for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen.

Manhattan Project

When the atomic bomb project was started in 1942, Meitner was offered a key position at Los Alamos Laboratory, but she refused to work on it, saying, "I will have nothing to do with the bomb!"

Dinner with President

Meitner was known all over the world, so much so, that many claimed her the female equivalent of Einstein. She was awarded "Woman of the Year" in 1946 by the National Press Club, Washington and also joined President Truman for dinner.

Chemical elements

In 1917, Meitner discovered a stable isotope of Protactinium along with chemist Otto Hahn. She also has a chemical element named after her, a radioactive synthetic element, called the Meitnerium.

Nobel Prize snub

Meitner was nominated 19 times for Chemistry Nobel Prize and 29 times for Physics Nobel Prize but never got the top honors. Despite that, she was invited to attend the prestigious Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962.

Critical of friends

She was critical of her friends: Otto Hahn, Max von Laue and Werner Heisenberg, they who participated in Germany's nuclear bomb project. Their association prompted Einstein to write a letter to the-then American president Roosevelt to build a bomb of their own, before the Germans did.

Meitner wrote a letter to the three: "The reason I write this to you is true friendship. You all worked for Nazi Germany and did not even try to resist...What then must the English and Americans be thinking!?" 

After her death in 1968, her nephew Frisch composed the inscription on her gravestone, which read: "Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity."

10 Carl Sagan Quotes On Science And Life

Carl Sagan was the man who brought astronomy into our living rooms with his masterpiece, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was viewed by over 500 million people around the world!

As a scientist, he contributed enormously to our understanding of the solar system. He correctly predicted the existence of methane lakes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. When other astronomers had imagined Venus to be a mild summery paradise, Carl showed it to be dry, thick and unpleasantly hot.

He also predicted life on Venus in 1967 and we may be close to proving him right. Not just it, Carl Sagan played a leading role in every major spacecraft mission to explore the solar system in the 20th century: Mariner, Viking, Voyager, you name it!

Although Carl died quite young (had he been alive, he'd be celebrating his 86th birthday in 2020), his ideas and thoughts will remain with us for-ever. Let us have a look at 10 Carl Sagan quotes which are relevant to modern times, shall we?

On climate change

Protest in Goa

Carl says: Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.

On life elsewhere

All my life, I've wondered about life beyond the earth. On those countless other planets that we think circle other suns, is there also life? Might the beings of other worlds resemble us, or would they be astonishingly different? What would they be made of? In the vast Milky Way galaxy, how common is what we call life? The nature of life on earth and the quest for life elsewhere are the two sides of the same question: the search for who we are.

On science and politics

We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged.

On afterlife

He says: I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

On cannabis

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.

On experiment

Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world.

Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo.

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

On god

The idea that a God or gods is necessary to effect one or more of these origins has been under repeated attack over the last few thousand years. Because we know something about phototropism and plant hormones, we can understand the opening of the morning glory independent of divine micro-intervention. It is the same for the entire skein of causality back to the origin of the universe. As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do.

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On our place in the cosmos

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

On the future

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

On books

The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.

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Why did Paul Dirac speak so little?

Paul Dirac was a British theoretical physicist who is most well known for his contributions to quantum mechanics. He gave an equation that predicted the existence of anti-matter in 1928. But, perhaps, there's another reason why Dirac is so widely recognized, that for his introversion and timidity.

Some of Dirac's colleagues at Cambridge defined a "unit of conversation" in his honour meaning one spoken word per hour. Although, this was a joke but the reality was pretty much the same. One commented on Dirac: "He's a lean, meek, shy young fellow who goes slyly along the streets, walks quite close to the walls, like a thief, and is not at all healthy."

The reason, for his incredible shyness and speechlessness, many claim, was Dirac's strained relationship with his father, especially during his growing up years. In fact, after his father died, Dirac wrote: "I feel much freer now, and I am my own man."

According to study, authoritarian parenting styles generally lead to children being obedient and proficient, but they rank much lower in happiness, social competence, and self-esteem.

Paul Dirac's father, Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac, an immigrant from Switzerland, was very strict right from the beginning. He forced his children to speak to him only in French, so that they might learn his native language.

Dirac, who knew just a little French, spoke even less in order to avoid being scolded for wrong grammar. Dirac took a lot of time to frame sentences, as he was told never to start a sentence without knowing its end.

Dirac found comfort in his imagination and when he wanted to put across his thoughts he would do so by writing them. In his early thirties, Dirac wrote in a letter to a close friend that to defend himself against the hostilities he perceived around him he retreated into his own imagination.

Paul had a younger sister, Béatrice, and an older brother, Reginald, who committed suicide in 1925. Dirac, then 23, later recalled: "My parents were terribly distressed by it...But I didn't know they cared so much? I never thought that parents were supposed to care for their children. From then on I knew."

So, from early childhood, physics and maths had become Dirac's escape. The magical world of numbers and objects and their interrelationships interested him quite deeply. His father wanted Dirac to become an engineer but after graduating Dirac switched careers to pursue physics degree.

It was the right thing to go against his father's wishes because as an engineer Dirac couldn't land a job in post-first-world-war Britain. Dirac chose his passion and was allowed to skip the first year of the honours degree credit to his engineering degree.

As we all know, Paul Dirac made not only a career out of pure sciences but also revolutionized physics for next half a century. However, despite all his achievements, Dirac remained merry in his own company and suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socializing or small talk.

Fourth Woman To Win Nobel Prize In Physics

In 1903, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics for research on spontaneous radiation as discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel in 1896.

It took 60 years, in 1963, for another woman to win the most coveted prize in physics. Maria Goeppert Mayer was awarded for discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.

Another 55 years later, in 2018, Donna Strickland received the award for her 1985 discovery, chirped pulse amplification, a technique which is used to make cellphone screens.

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Cut to 2020, we have another woman Nobel laureate in physics, her name Andrea Ghez, who has been awarded the top honor for the discovery of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's center!

She shared the prize with colleague Reinhard Genzel. The other half of it went to Sir Roger Penrose.

When asked to comment on it, Andrea said: "I'm grateful, I'm thrilled. You know I work for the science and I'm just glad that it is recognized."

One might ask, "Why do we care about supermassive black holes, like, why is that so important to know about?

Andrea says: "They represent the breakdown of our understanding of the laws of physics. It's transformed our knowledge of these objects that we didn't really have proof existed in the universe."

By picturing the center of Milky Way galaxy at infrared wavelength, Ghez and her team were able to peer through heavy dust that blocked visible light, and produced images of the Black Hole, Sagittarius A*.

By using Kepler's third law, she showed that its mass was 4.1 million solar masses. Based on its mass and radius calculations, astronomers concluded that Sagittarius A* was a supermassive black hole.

Andrea has appeared on many black hole physics documentaries for BBC and Discovery Channel. When asked about her role as a science comunicator, she replied: "We all must step up to talk about the role of science and that is, I think, more important than ever."

She stayed up many nights at the Keck telescope photographing the center of Milky Way and then superimposed each still photograph on top of the other to make a film showing how stars around the center behaved due to Sag A*. In 2020, we celebrate her brilliance and dedication.

Roger Penrose Wins Nobel Prize In Physics

American theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, had once said: "Mathematicians are only dealing with the structure of the reasoning and they do not really care about what they're talking. The physicist, on the other hand, has meaning to all the phrases."

Sir Roger Penrose agrees.

In his 1997 book, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Penrose wrote: "Well, why am I talking about things when I do not know what they really mean? It is probably because I am a mathematician and mathematicians do not mind so much about this, so long as those things can say something about the connections between them."

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Cut to 2020, Penrose is the winner of Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. He shares it with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.

"I was good at maths, yes, but I didn't necessarily do very well in my tests. But the teacher realized if he gave me enough time, I would do well," the laureate recalled.

While he had been working proactively to unravel the mysteries of the universe since the 50s, Roger Penrose came to a much wider public attention after publishing of A Brief History of Time in 1988.

Penrose and Hawking go way back. They both were the winners of Wolf Prize in 1988 for Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems (1965). Their friendship and collaboration were captured even in the movies: Hawking (2004) and Theory of Everything (2014).

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Sir Penrose was most heavily inspired by his father, Lionel Penrose, who was a psychiatrist and a geneticist. In fact, brilliance runs down their family: his grandfather was a renowned Irish artist, one of his brothers is a physicist himself and the other is a Chess grandmaster, his sister, a geneticist, has followed in her father's footsteps!

Since Penrose was purely a mathematician, his work was really abstract in that sense. But he was drawn to astrophysics by Dennis Sciama (who also was a doctoral advisor to Stephen Hawking).

And that is how they first met.

They proposed two types of singularities: space-like for non-rotating black holes and time-like for rotating black holes.

It was thought that in the eventual collapse of a star (to form a black hole), if the star is spinning and so possesses even some angular momentum, maybe the centrifugal force could counteract gravity and keep the singularity from forming.

Penrose-Hawking theorems showed that that cannot happen, and that a singularity will always form once an event horizon forms. In other words, Penrose proved with complicated maths that Black holes were not impossible and in fact a result of relativity.

Hence, in 2020, we celebrate Sir Roger Penrose's contributions to physics, his incredible writings on human consciousness and his life in general.

Albert Einstein on Gandhi, Non-Violence and India

Generations to come, will scarce believe, that such a man as this one, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. This was said of Mahatma Gandhi by Albert Einstein on the former's 70th birthday in 1939.

Einstein was deeply inspired by Gandhi's teachings and so much so that he called him the most enlightened of all the politicians of his time. The two never met but they exchanged letters among themselves. In other words, they were pen pals.

In 1950, two years after Gandhi's death, Einstein recorded an interview for United Nations from his study at Princeton University in New Jersey.

He said, "We should strive to do things in his spirit...Not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil."

Gandhi's picture framed in Einstein's study

On that radio interview, Einstein advocated for non-cooperation, a peaceful form of protest against what you believe is evil. Such a movement was launched by Gandhi in 1920s.

Einstein believed that if the world were to be improved, it could not be done simply with new scientific discoveries, it also had to encompass morals and ideals.

"In this respect I feel," Einstein said: "That the Churches have much guilt. She has always allied herself with those who rule, who have political power, and more often than not, at the expense of peace and humanity as a whole."

Einstein noted that the admiration for Mahatma Gandhi in all countries of the world rests on recognition of the fact that in time of utter moral decadence, Gandhi was perhaps the only statesman to stand for a higher level of human relationship in political sphere.

Their communication began through letters. Einstein wrote the following congratulatory letter to Gandhi in the 1930s (this was after their renowned Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi).

Translation:

"I use the presence of your friend in our home to send you these lines. You have shown through your works, that it is possible to succeed without violence even with those who have not discarded the method of violence.

We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of your country, and will help to establish an international authority, respected by all, that will take decisions and replace war conflicts.

P.S. I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face some day."

Gandhi responded, saying: "Dear friend, I was delighted to have your beautiful letter sent through Sundaram. It is a great consolation to me that the work I am doing finds favour in your sight. I do indeed wish that we could meet face to face and that too in India at my Ashram."

Despite their intentions, the two greats never met in person.

On Gandhi's death, Einstein wrote: He died as the victim of his own principles, because in time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself.