Post by snacky on Sept 19, 2014 4:56:52 GMT
Lise Meitner is one of the greatest women in science, generally given credit for the idea of nuclear fission even though she was overlooked for the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner
I was reading about her start in science because I think of her as a near contemporary with Emily. Meitner had to delay entering univeristy until a government ruling that allowed women to obtain degrees. Even then she had to study privately and take an external exam. When she moved to Berlin after graduation, she worked, unpaid (supported by family and friends), in a lab in the basement of the chemistry institute where her long time partner Otto Hahn worked. She couldn't use the bathroom in the building and was at first excluded from the male spaces. But she kept talking physics and impressed the scientists she talked to. The great physicist Max Planck (who was staunchly believed women belonged in the kitchen) let her attend his lectures and hired her as a lab assistant.
Lise Meitner never married, despite being a beautiful woman, because "she didn't have time". She was too busy making great discoveries in science, and competing with the great male physicists of her day!
I think her career - particularly how often she had to work for free and how often men pushed her to the back of the room and stole credit from her despite the fact she could obviously hold her own in the genius department is an interesting model for Emily.
By the way, in 1902, the "father of nuclear physics", Ernest Rutherford, was in Canada (McGill University, Quebec). So it's possible Emily could be in on circles at the cutting edge of scientific discovery, even in Toronto.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner
I was reading about her start in science because I think of her as a near contemporary with Emily. Meitner had to delay entering univeristy until a government ruling that allowed women to obtain degrees. Even then she had to study privately and take an external exam. When she moved to Berlin after graduation, she worked, unpaid (supported by family and friends), in a lab in the basement of the chemistry institute where her long time partner Otto Hahn worked. She couldn't use the bathroom in the building and was at first excluded from the male spaces. But she kept talking physics and impressed the scientists she talked to. The great physicist Max Planck (who was staunchly believed women belonged in the kitchen) let her attend his lectures and hired her as a lab assistant.
Lise Meitner never married, despite being a beautiful woman, because "she didn't have time". She was too busy making great discoveries in science, and competing with the great male physicists of her day!
I think her career - particularly how often she had to work for free and how often men pushed her to the back of the room and stole credit from her despite the fact she could obviously hold her own in the genius department is an interesting model for Emily.
By the way, in 1902, the "father of nuclear physics", Ernest Rutherford, was in Canada (McGill University, Quebec). So it's possible Emily could be in on circles at the cutting edge of scientific discovery, even in Toronto.
