A Review Essay: "Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age", by Patricia Rife

Abstract

The recently published book, ``Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age'', by Patricia Rife (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1999) is reviewed in an essay for the lay audience. Meitner was a leading nuclear physicist at the time that the nucleus was the most exciting frontier of science. To establish her career, she had to overcome daunting prejudices against women in science and academia. Being of Jewish origin in Germany in the 1930's, she narrowly escaped certain disaster. Meitner was a crucial participant in the discovery of nuclear fission, yet did not share in the Nobel Prize that her collaborator, Otto Hahn, received in 1945. How these events came about, how they were intertwined with contemporary history and how they fit into the evolution of Meitner's social conscience and her abhorrence of war are some of the fascinating subjects discussed in the book and reviewed in this essay.