Most physicists hanker, at least secretly, for a distinct scientific identity, a piece of the physical universe with their name carved on it. Her fate was to be known best as the woman who did not get a share of Hahn’s Nobel prize for the discovery of nuclear fission. She was a Jew she was also a timid Austrian emigre’. Meitner, rare as a positron in a sea of electrons, was a female physicist in 1907 Berlin, when women’s access to higher education was barred. Hahn was Meitner’s reflection in a mirror of privilege: male, affable, affluent and standard-issue German. Opposite they may have been, but not equal. In between they formed a partnership which in one way or another lasted 60 years. They were born in 1878 within a few months of each other they died ninety years later within two months of each other. IF scientists could be created by pair-production, like the particle antiparticle pairs that come from the gamma-ray decays, then the experimental nuclear physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn could well be the result.
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