https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/02/05/lise-meitner/
"In the fall of 1946, a South African little girl aspiring to be a scientist
wrote to Einstein and ended her letter with a self-conscious entreatment: “I
hope you will not think any the less of me for being a girl!” Einstein
responded with words of assuring wisdom that resonate to this day: “I do not
mind that you are a girl, but the main thing is that you yourself do not mind.
There is no reason for it.”
And yet reasons don’t always come from reason. The history of science, like the
history of the world itself, is the history of unreasonable asymmetries of
power, the suppressive consequences of which have meant that the comparatively
few women who rose to the top of their respective field did so due to
inordinate brilliance and tenacity.
Among the most outstanding yet under-celebrated of these pioneering women is
the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner (November 7, 1878–October 27, 1968), who
led the team that discovered nuclear fission but was excluded from the Nobel
Prize for the discovery, and whose story I first encountered in Alan Lightman’s
illuminating 1990 book
The Discoveries. This diminutive Jewish woman, who had
barely saved her own life from the Nazis, was heralded by Einstein as the Marie
Curie of the German-speaking world. She is the subject of the excellent
biography
Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics by chemist, science historian, and
Guggenheim fellow Ruth Lewin Sime."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
