This brilliant woman pioneered nuclear technology, but her male colleague got a Nobel Prize for it

Lise Meitner is a prime example of the ‘Matilda Effect’

By Elise Knutsen

Dr. Lise Meitner (1878–1968), Austrian born physicist who was one of three scientists who shared the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966 for the discovery of uranium fission. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

In the days after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a mysterious figure began to emerge in the press. A “Third Rich Exile,” or more pointedly a Fleeing Jewess,” the public was told, had escaped from Nazi Germany with the nuclear secrets required to weaponize uranium. Overnight, nuclear physicist Dr. Lise Meitner achieved fleeting popular fame as the Jewish Mother of the Bomb, the Hero Refugee Scientist who stymied Nazi efforts to obtain nuclear capability.

In reality, Meitner had nothing to do with the bomb. However, as a pioneering Austrian physicist of Jewish descent, Meitner led the research that ultimately discovered nuclear fission. But after the brief flurry of media attention in the months following the end of World War II, Meitner’s name was largely forgotten, becoming little more than a footnote in the history of Nazi scientists and the birth of the Atomic age.

The name inscribed in the history books was Otto Hahn, Meitner’s colleague and professional partner for more than 30 years. In 1945, Hahn even received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, soon followed by…