The Path to Nuclear Fission The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto ... - VEA

The Path to Nuclear Fission – The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn
Suggested Student Responses
General Questions:
1. Which Scientists are pictured as those working at the University of Berlin.?
Albert Einstein, Gustav Hertz, Max Planck, James Franck and Max von Laue.
2. Where does Lise Meitner come from and who does she work under in Berlin?
She is Austrian and received her PhD in Physics from the University of Vienna in 1906. She
works under Max Planck.
3. What is Hahn’s history and who does he come to work with in Berlin?
He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Marburg in Germany and worked at
McGill University in Montreal, Canada, under Ernest Rutherford before coming back to
Germany to work under the chemist Emile Fischer.
4. What is Fischer’s and the other male scientists’ attitude to Meitner? How are women students
treated generally at this time?
Fischer would not let her work in the laboratory in case she set her hair on fire. She worked
in a room in the basement with a separate entrance. She received no salary and was ignored
by the other scientists except Hahn.
5. What are Hahn and Meitner studying?
Every known substance that is a Beta emitter, and they discover several new ones.
6. What is the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute? What are the roles of Fischer, Hahn and Meitner?
A privately endowed institute, with a chemistry institute within it, in Berlin. It allows top
German scientists to work at an international level. Fischer is in charge of the chemistry
institute and offers Hahn a paid position as a scientific associate with the title of professor.
Meitner is expected to work with him but her status is unpaid guest.
7. What happens to Meitner in 1912? In 1913?
In 1912 she is made Max Planck’s assistant, assigned to marking his papers, and in 1913 she
is finally promoted by Fischer to scientific associate, equal in status to Hahn but receiving a
much smaller salary.
8. What is Rutherford’s exciting discovery?
Rutherford discovers that the atom is not a shapeless globule, as was formerly thought, but
has a tiny, but massive , nucleus that is positively charged surrounded by a wispy cloud of
negatively charged electrons.
9. What is “the long awaited excuse for war”?
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb nationalist.
10. What were the international laws about the use of gas in war? What happened to Hahn’s scruples?
International laws forbade the use of poisoned weapons. His mind was numbed by the
senselessness of war , until he no longer had any scruples about the whole thing.
11. What is Meitner’s contribution to the war effort? What are her impressions?
She volunteers as an X-ray nurse- technician with the Austrian army and is quickly sent to a
military hospital near the Russian front. She was amazed at how bad it was, how much
suffering there was and that the best result for many would be to be crippled.
12. Why did Meitner comment that Einstein was a curiosity?
She thought his comments were naïve and that he was peculiar in his political views and she
found that an educated person who never picked up a newspaper in those times to be a
curiosity.
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