Reviews for Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

The average rating for Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-02-19 00:00:00 Paul Zahodnik Lise Meitner may be less known to the public, nevertheless her remarkable trajectory as witness and significant actor of the twentieth century scientific, but also socio-political developments, reveals her as a strong character and model. Lise Meitner was not recognized for the nuclear fission discovery and correct physical interpretation, the whole credit being taken by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. It makes a renowned and strong case of a scientist who was deprived of a well-deserved recognition. Otto Hahn alone won the Nobel Prize in 1944 for this discovery. The book shows that this omission is only to be added to the gender and racial prejudices Lise Meitner had to suffer from. Rife's book presents the momentous event of the nuclear fission explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch - her nephew - in 1939, based on the experiments conducted by Hahn and Strassmann and on the droplet model of atom developed by Niels Bohr, in such a manner that it traces its tumultuous history: the joy of discovery, the doubts and hesitation in making it known, the strife to inform the scientific community, the embarrassment of having to retract previously made assertions etc. In the war years of 1940-1945 Lise Meitner became highly disillusioned over the shift to the "big" science based on expensive technological equipment and huge military funding. She lived the drama of not agreeing to the social contexts in which the scientific results were used. Prejudice and exclusion, denial of her major role in scientific discovery unfortunately accompanied her across the Germany's borders too, in Siegbahn Institute in Stockholm where she was accepted as a researcher, but marginalized (1939-1947). Her contribution to nuclear fission was a pure scientific insight, not technological as the breakthrough that followed the nuclear fission discovery (this is emphasized in the connection with her being called inThe New York Sun Magazine "the woman who aided the bomb research", after Hiroshima bombing by the allies). She repeatedly underlined that the use of atomic energy for military purposes was only the first type of usage; creative applications - medicine etc. - were only to follow and she was insistently fighting for the return to the spirit of co-operation among scientists, as it was before the war. A recurrent theme in the book is Lise Meitner's shy and unassuming presence. She let show her sense of pride very seldom. She was very modest, minimized her qualities and even her contributions at the beginning of her career, lacked ostentation in asserting her results. Only in her late years, when injustice was just too painful and significant, she bitterly voiced her concerns, in personal letters to Otto Hahn. Her outdated, self-effacing look contrasted with the strong, but gentle role model she played for the young generation of women, taking their chance on the science path. One should not understand that only women were mentored by Lise; some of her brilliant assistants and friends were Max Delbrcke and Carl Von Weiszecker in Berlin and, later in Stockholm, Gudmund Borelius. Patricia Rife's book has the merit of highlighting more than Lise Meitner's prodigious career path. Figures of mentors for the teams of young researchers and scientists are drawn with pregnancy. Their vision in recognizing exceptional talent but also their limits, as members of a society, submitted to its prescriptions are presented with delicacy and prized objectivity. In Lise Meitner's case this is related to the prejudices against women in science, later as Jewess in science. The same mentors were seeing and supporting - most of the time - clearly that exceptionality should break these unfair canons. Such mentors were Ludwig Boltzmann and Max Planck for Lise Meitner and Ernest Rutherford for Otto Hahn. You will read with delight about the charismatic and self conscious Boltzmann - the defender of atomism against "energetics" theory (Wilhelm Ostwald) and positivism (Ernst Mach) - who boldly stated in front of the students that he will not speak about predecessors as he has none; you will witness the extremely tense discussion Max Planck had with Hitler when trying to stop the haemorrhage of scientists form institutes and laboratories provoked by the "principles" of the 3rd Reich (about removal of non-Arian scientists from institutes and universities). There is a great and tensed description of solidarity around Lise Meitner and the risks taken for her escape from Germany. Along with it you will read also about other examples of harassment Hitler's regime was exercising upon the society and its response to it. Among these you will be impressed by the dignified way Jewish personality recognition could take shape in the years of National Socialism raising (Fritz Haber's funeral ceremony). Otto Hahn is the other figure which is conspicuous in the book. His portrait is of an outstanding specialist in radiochemistry with personal and team work scientific discoveries (especially with Lise Meitner and later with Fritz Strassmann). His collaboration with Lise Meitner is presented to have had slippages in the attitude towards her, especially after her leaving of Germany. He was sometimes driven by the fact that he was German in the detriment of the principles of justice. Other prominent figures in the book are Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Their portraits are drawn in fine touches. Albert Einstein appears of weird political innocence during the World War I and of steady pacific position all along his life, affirmed during the WorldWar II (the report to President Roosevelt leading to the Manhattan project). Einstein is well highlighted as the modern and plucky spirit of the theoretical physics, as a pure mathematical construction, opposed to that of the pragmatic, experimental physics supported by National Socialist regime in Germany in the thirties. His attitude and work was seen as an insolent affirmation of the superiority of the Judaic spirit, without any connection to reality and thus to be suppressed. Niels Bohr appears in the book with his imposing stature, both physically and figuratively, in science, by issuing ideas with strong impact in a modest, but insistent way. He is shown getting involved politically from all his heart from a clear anti-war position (Denmark government warning on German intentions in the nuclear field). The whole story is told by a historian of science - Patricia Rife - who dedicated 14 years of work to understand Lise Meitner's life and achievements and to identify the crucial moments of her destiny. The author's approach is like of carving a tapestry out of facts of life, the discoveries in the nuclear physics - around nuclear fission - and the socio-political events as background. In fact, the author mixes interpretations and carefully chosen facts from letters, autobiographies, interviews, other papers of history of science to support them. The story being captivating, one adheres easily to its subjectivity, even if sometimes you could suspect a feminist touch. The author did not avoid mentioning - and even developing - the scientist's moments of lack of inspiration, necessities of retraction, in an attempt to give a credible portrait of her heroine. The book is structured in several parts out of which the history itself, related in a breathtaking manner, is following chronologically Lise Meitner's life events against the scientific and historical background. It covers interlaced big themes such as: the scientist's social role and its attitude towards war, gender and racial racism in science, priority credits for sensitive and turbulent issues, development of physical models and theories from laboratory results in the twentieth century, followed by disputes and feverish activities of validation across world laboratories, reflecting the deep division in the scientific world during the ascension of Hitler and the Third Reich. Each chapter has rich "End Notes" which help to go thoroughly into the historical or scientific context of the quoted assertions. "Chronology" and "List of Awards and Honours" are summaries of the events in the history you have just read about. One can study Lise Meitner's scientific work looking for the titles in "Publications by Lise Meitner". Otherwise, along the book, the scientific work and the discoveries of what is currently known in nuclear physics are hinted to in an easy to understand way for an undergraduate in physics, mathematics or chemistry. A very rich bibliography gives the measure of the author's thorough research.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-06-05 00:00:00 Michael Burke I knew the basic story of Lise Meitner before I read this book, but it was nice to have it in the broader context of the birth of modern physics in the 1930s and 40s. The Nazis destroyed so much more than just the physics renaissance occurring in Berlin at the time of their rise to power - but one can't read this book and wonder where would we be if that community hadn't been shattered? Many of the senior scientists were saved by the world science community - but what happened to all the young ones, yet to make names for themselves, who didn't have Nobel Prize winners like Niels Bohr personally fighting for their safety? Meitner would have been an amazing woman to know. She became a physicist at a time when women weren't allowed to obtain degrees, much less obtain academic positions - but she never let it stop her, she just did it anyways. It took the Nazi regime to stop her, send her running for her life, depriving her of her work and her from credit from the Nobel prize committee for the correct interpretation of one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century: nuclear fission.