Lise Meitner (7.02.1878-27.10.1968) was an Austrian physicist and radiochemist. She was born in Vienna. She graduated from the University of Vienna (1905). She began her scientific career in O. Hahn's laboratory in Berlin in 1907 as a guest. In 1912 — 33 she worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (Berlin — Dahlem), heading the physics department from 1918, and at the same time from 1912 at the University of Berlin (professor from 1926). In 1933 she suffered persecution by the fascist regime and was forced to emigrate, first to Denmark and then to Sweden. In 1938 — 46 she worked at the Nobel Institute, and in 1947—60 in the laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm). From 1960 she lived in England.
Her work was in the field of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry. Together with Hahn she developed (1909) the radioactive recoil method and discovered protactinium (1918) and a number of other radioactive isotopes. She studied nuclear isomerism and radioactive transformations, developed precise methods for studying beta spectra, and was the first to describe and correctly interpret the emission of Auger electrons. In 1922 — 24 she developed the idea of discrete energy states of nuclei, and in 1921 she proposed a model of the structure of atomic nuclei out of alpha particles, protons and electrons.
In 1932 she was one of the first to bring about nuclear transformations under the action of neutrons. Together with O. Frisch she gave the correct interpretation (early 1939) of the experiments of Hahn and Strassmann, who on bombarding uranium with neutrons found barium among the products of the nuclear reaction. She explained the observed phenomenon as the division of the uranium nucleus into two “fragments” — a new type of splitting of the atom. She introduced the term for this phenomenon — “fission”.
She predicted the chain nuclear fission reaction.
A member of a number of academies of sciences and scientific societies.