StoryLise Meitner, 1878-1968
As a Jewish woman, the Austrian-born physicist Lise Meitner was doubly disadvantaged during her scientific career in Nazi Germany. After fleeing to Sweden in 1938, she received a plea for help from her research collaborator when the experiments they had planned together produced some unexpected results. A couple of days later, she had solved the problem – they had unwittingly initiated the break-up of a uranium atom. By 1945, her theoretical conclusions had been realised practically in the atomic bomb.