Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Otto Hahn (1879-1968) was awarded Nobel Prize for Uranium fission in 1945, but Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was not.
Otto Hahn (1879-1968) was awarded Nobel Prize for Uranium fission in 1945, but Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was not.
He was an an excellent experimental chemist, the discovery was chemical in nature (he detected minute amount of Barium in an ultra-pure Uranium, exposed to neutrons, and his 1945 Nobel prize was in Chemistry.
Hahn and Meitner closely collaborated for over 30 years prior and during the discovery, right before she had to flee Nazi Germany, being baptized 1/4 Jew. She was important, if not critical for the discovery. She was the first to theoretically explain the results, as well as predict new ones, and was encouraging him to proceed. Hahn claimed that his chemistry had been solely responsible for the discovery of Barium, thought that fission was the only explanation, but he was very reluctant to get into the nuclear physics, he didn't understand.
The Nobel Committee for Chemistry consisted of some Swedish chemists, just as clueless in nuclear physics as Otto Hahn was, aggravated by isolation during the war, being a "neutral" Nazi satellite state. Other scientists were telling them at the time they should get a clue, but they wouldn't listen.
Otto Hahn was a decent man, but not a hero. He asked old Max Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others. So Hahn stopped.
Meitner fled with 10 Reichsmarks and a diamond ring Otto Hahn had given her, which he had inherited from his mother.
Hanh continued to correspond with Meitner during and after the discovery, but he didn't publish jointly with Meitner in 1939 (not a hero). Hahn had sent the manuscript of their paper to Naturwissenschaften in December 1938, simultaneously communicating their results to Meitner in a letter. Meitner correctly interpreted their results as being nuclear fission and published their paper in Nature.
Meitner refused an offer to work Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Hahn didn't work on the Nazi bomb either, not that they had much of a project, except indirectly by continuing his research, which was very much relevant (fission products, isotope separation, and measurement of nuclear constants).
After the war, Meitner, while acknowledging her own moral failing in staying in Germany from 1933 to 1938, was bitterly critical of Hahn and other German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazis and done nothing to protest against the crimes of Hitler's regime, especially Heisenberg.
In 1946 Meitner was nominated (by Bohr) to Nobel Prize in physics, but was narrowly voted down. If Hahn nominated her, she probably would have won. She had a good career otherwise, staying in Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner#Awards_and_honours
Nobel prize committee discussion archives become public after 50 years. Hahn's and Meitner's became public in 1996. This, as well as prior years, allow the look into the process, which Physics Today did in 1997:
http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PHTOAD000050000009000026000001&idtype=cvips&doi=10.1063/1.881933
They reveal that the process is full of political/organizational/personal biases, igrorance, arbitrariness, carelessness, corruption, and haste, decided by second-rate Swedish scientists. They didn't forget to award 5 prizes in physics and chemistry to themselves (4 to the members of the Nobel committees) in 1901-1945, (one physics prize to Nils Dalen for regulators in lighthouses), while awarding 0 to Norway and 1 chemistry prize to Finland's Artturi Virtanen for his silo method of conserving cattle fodder.
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Nevertheless, it is highly unusual for the committees to review the contributions of a senior scientist as extensively as the chemistry committee did in the case of Lise Meitner between 1939 and 1945 without reaching an informed opinion as to whether or not she should be included in the award. It is also highly unusual for a review, such as the one conducted by Hulthen in 1946, not to be based on the established historical record of a discovery. The decision not to recommend Meitner for the physics prize of 1946 was a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist.
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That personal negative is the fact that Meitner was moving from Hulthen's institute to a rival one within Swedish physics community, and he didn't want to give boost to a rival.
It's a shame the society still gives that much weight to Nobel Prizes, and no alternative with more weight appeared, although by now it's well known that Peace and Literature prizes are a joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards#Physics
Although Lise Meitner and Rosalind Franklin are the most known non-recipients, there are many many more, but nobody cares, likely because they are almost all men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner#Awards_and_honours
Labels: Oleg Zabluda