December 17, 2024 • 45 mins
The Remarkable Journey of Lise Meitner
In this episode of 'She Changed History', hosts Vicky and Simon delve into the extraordinary life of Austrian physicist Lise Meitner. From her early years in Vienna and her groundbreaking scientific contributions to her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany, the episode highlights Meitner's perseverance in the face of adversity. The discussion covers her significant role in the discovery of nuclear fission, the controversial Nobel Prize snub, and her enduring legacy in science. Listeners are also encouraged to learn more about Ada Lovelace, another pioneering woman in technology.
Sources are:
New Scientist Obituary https://www.newscientist.com/people/lise-meitner/
The Washington Post Article The Woman Behind the Bomb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/lisemeitner.htm
Lisa Meitner, A Life in Physics by Ruth Lewin Sime ISBN 0520089065
00:00 Introduction and Festive Greetings
00:48 Christmas Menu Controversies
01:58 Celebrating Ada Lovelace
02:43 Introducing Lise Meitner
04:07 Early Life and Education
06:39 Challenges in Academia
08:14 Collaborations and Contributions
11:03 Recognition and Struggles
19:16 World War I and Beyond
23:09 Lise Meitner's Early Career and Discoveries
24:20 Challenges During the Nazi Regime
26:37 Escape from Germany
31:10 The Discovery of Nuclear Fission
39:39 Recognition and Legacy
42:47 Conclusion and Reflections
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
audio1327313102 (00:06):
excited.
Okay.
Ready?
I'm ready.
Cool.
Hi, Vicky.
Hi, Simon.
Hi, how you doing?
And welcome everyone to SheChanged History.
Thank you.
I'm in my Christmas jumper forthose watching clips on YouTube
or Mm hmm.
Or our Insta, I'm in fullfestive swing, are you feeling
(00:28):
Christmassy?
Yeah, my wreath's up and itlooks much better than I
thought, so that's nice.
I tried to do some Christmasshopping today but I just
couldn't.
I couldn't get in the vibe, so Iabandoned ship and came home.
so I think we'll get in there,and then we've got this
Christmas meal tonight, sohopefully that'll help with
Christmas.
Choir Christmas meal.
Choir Christmas meal, yeah,looking forward to it.
(00:48):
I'm very excited, um, butControversially, there wasn't a
Christmas menu that was shared.
It was only food.
Yeah, well, I'm actually quitehappy about that.
I generally don't, yeah, I'm notkeen on restaurants that do a
Christmas menu because it'salways like a worse version of
their normal menu.
(01:09):
Oh, that's, I feel like that'sso unfounded.
What's going on there?
Did you just have a bad timeonce?
Yeah, I've had one badexperience and therefore
dismissed Christmas menusforevermore.
Forever and ever and ever.
Well, we were going to book thatItalian in Gloucester for my
(01:29):
birthday meal this Friday.
Yeah.
But they were, because it'sDecember, they were forcing us
to have the Christmas menu.
Which doesn't have on it thebest dishes on their menu, and
it's more expensive, and you'vegot to pay in advance.
So what are we doing?
Going to Monmouth.
Okay, is that what I've, that'sItalian as well in Monmouth?
(01:50):
It is, yeah.
Oh, okay.
I was like, I've orderedItalian.
I was panicking then.
I was like, what's happening?
I've definitely ordered Italian.
Oh my gosh.
And talking of celebrations, alittle fun fact before we start
is that we're recording on the11th of December.
We don't know when this willair.
Um, but, um, But yesterday onthe 10th of December was Ada
Lovelace's birthday.
(02:12):
Oh, excellent.
Yeah, so I shared our Adaepisode because obviously you
did a great episode on AdaLovelace.
I can't remember what number sheis.
Number two.
She was right out the gate, soAda Lovelace.
So, episode two, the rebelliousromantic who birthed the digital
age.
And you can celebrate Ada bylistening to the episode, rating
(02:33):
and reviewing.
These, all the things, all thethings to keep us relevant.
What have you got for us today,Simon?
Well, today we've got anabsolute banger, of science.
Love it.
an Austrian physicist.
So today we shine spotlight onLisa Meitner, a brilliant
physicist whose contributions tonuclear science were nothing
(02:56):
short of revolutionary.
Meitner's journey is one ofintellectual curiosity,
unwavering perseverance, andunfortunately, It's a stark
reminder of the challenges facedby women in science,
particularly during thetumultuous first half of the
20th century.
Join us as we explore the lifeof this remarkable woman from
her early years in Vienna to herdramatic escape from Nazi
Germany, her groundbreakingscientific achievements, and the
(03:19):
controversial Nobel Prize snubthat marred her well deserved
recognition.
Nobel Prize snub, That soundsVery much the purpose of this
podcast.
Right up my street.
You need to be informed andfurious in equal measure.
They're the feelings I want tofeel when we do this, so yeah.
(03:40):
And also we've got an escapefrom the Nazis as well, so I
feel like it's got all thehallmarks of a She Changed
History, yeah.
Very cool.
All right.
And so our sources today, are anobituary from New Scientist, a
Washington Post article, TheWoman Behind the Bomb, and a
fantastic book, Lisa Mightner, ALife in Physics, written by Ruth
(04:02):
Lewis Syme.
Okay, let's go.
So Lise Meitner was born in 1878in Vienna, to a Jewish family,
quite well off, educated.
Her father was one of the firstJewish lawyers admitted to
practice in Austria.
Oh My gosh, they're quiteforward They're forward
(04:24):
thinking.
Yeah Yeah, and she was broughtup with this sort of forward
thinking Freethinking mindset,at the time education for women
in Austria, wasn't prioritized.
They were, at most, they couldbe a teacher.
Okay.
her father wasn't on board withthat and encouraged them, to be
(04:45):
inquisitive and follow educationand follow their interests.
And so at the age of eight, shestarted, doing her own little
science experiments.
Like Ada, just like we weretalking about.
Just like Ada, yeah.
Like Ada Livingston the third.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she was looking at thecolors on sort of Films and oil
(05:07):
slicks and kept a little diaryof her scientific experiments
under her pillow Veryromanticized.
Yes, isn't it?
Right?
at the time women couldn't goto, go into higher education, so
they weren't allowed to progresspast a certain point, and you
(05:28):
needed your, higher educationdiploma to then get into
university, something called amatura.
She was keen and her family werewealthy.
So much like Ada again, she wasable to have private tuition.
Nice.
And sat a sort of independentexternal Matura exam, she along
(05:48):
with 13 other girls sat it, onlyfour of them passed, so she
passed and got into, universityof Vienna.
Okay.
And.
Well, one of the lecturers therewas Ludwig Boltzmann, She loved
his lectures.
And so she entered university in1901, and in 1906 she got her
(06:13):
doctorate.
She was only the second woman toearn a doctoral degree in
physics in the, in theUniversity of Vienna.
Nice.
Um, three years after the first.
Does she talk about her time atVienna at all?
Like, was she ostracized, or?
Uh, not particularly, althoughcoming up, there is some, when
(06:38):
she gets to Germany.
She's heading off to Germany.
Yeah, I can find.
So her dissertation was onthermal conduction in, in
homogenous bodies.
Haven't read it.
I'm sure it's great, but it gothurt.
You didn't read it as researchfor the podcast, Simon.
I didn't read it, I'm afraid.
(06:58):
Simon, the disservice you'redoing on listeners.
so Along the way, she was asked,she sort of got a bit of a
reputation that she was good atdoing experiments.
She was happy to learn andinvestigate independently, so a
fellow called, Paul Ehrenfestasked her to investigate, an
(07:21):
article that Lord Rayleigh hadwritten on This is like a, um,
physic name drop.
It really is.
You sound like you've gone to aHollywood party and you're just
dropping all these names.
Oh yeah, yeah, I was justspeaking to Nils Paul the other
day, yeah.
He's a great guy, great guy,yeah, so friendly.
Paul are in real life as well.
(07:41):
so Lord Rayleigh had done anexperiment which had produced
results that he wasn't able toexplain.
she had a look at it.
and was able to explain theresults.
And then made furtherpredictions on it based on her,
the explanation that she'dgiven, which she then verified
through her own experiments.
Come on, Lee, this is cool.
(08:02):
Right, she's like 28 at thetime, has only recently got her
doctorate and already she'smeeting these bigwigs of
science.
And contributing as well.
And contributing.
Yeah.
A little bit down the line shewas introduced to the concept of
radioactivity, still quite a newconcept at this time.
Remember this is around the timeof Marie Curie.
(08:25):
So radioactivity, this newishphenomenon, she was introduced
to it and she started doing herown experiments.
She likes an experiment, we knowthat.
She loves an experiment.
Submitted her findings to ascientific journal.
And her experiment was one ofthe experiments that led, I'm
(08:46):
sorry it's another name drop,that led Ernest Rutherford to
predict the nuclear atom.
Wow, he's a big name to drop.
He's a big name drop.
He's huge.
Even Vicky's heard of him.
She brings out useful resultsthat other people enjoy and use.
She left the University ofVienna to go to the Friedrich
(09:09):
Wilhelm University in Berlin.
Berlin at this time was reallythe center of physics, physics
research.
and it's this institute thatphysicist Max Planck taught.
Max Planck, another massivename.
Is this like a special time forphysics?
This is an incredible time forphysics.
(09:31):
Yeah.
Absolutely incredible.
And it's all around this time.
So Einstein's getting his NobelPrize around this time.
There's so much research goinginto physics.
electromagnetism, radioactivityis just coming along, we're
starting to get an understandingof the nuclear model, the atomic
model, uh, quantum physics as aconcept is starting to be
(09:56):
recognised and be researched.
So yeah, Max Planck taught hereat the Friedrich Wilhelm
University in Berlin, um, Planckinvited her to his home for
nefarious reasons, but shealready had a bit of a
(10:16):
reputation because of theseexperiments that she'd done back
in Vienna because of the workthat she'd done at that event.
to Rutherford's future work.
Now, I think that meanssomething different today than
it did back then.
Yeah.
I should say up front, she nevermarried, never had children.
Interesting.
(10:38):
Okay.
So she's dedicated to the cause.
Yeah, she really is.
Yeah.
Max Plank, I find it weird.
He had twin daughters.
but, didn't agree with womenbeing admitted to university.
It's so internalised, isn't it?
It's, I don't understand howpeople can separate that type of
(11:02):
love.
Like, you either, to me, it'seither all encompassing,
unconditional, of course, andblind faith in a person, that
yes, you can do that.
I just, I can't.
I don't understand when you cantear it apart.
I love you, but I love you, butobviously you're never going to
(11:22):
amount to anything and you don'tdeserve to achieve all of these
things and you're not going tobe capable purely because you're
a woman.
I wish I'd had sons.
Like, he can't be saying that tohis daughters, but I mean, he is
saying that.
He is, through his actions.
Yeah, through his actions sothis was quite an unexpected, in
a sort of unexpected twist byPlank.
(11:44):
He invited Lisa to attend hislectures.
so she's fine.
She's okay.
She's okay.
And at this time, actually,women weren't really allowed to
attend lectures at theuniversity.
Despite her being a doctor.
Despite her having a doctoratein physics.
For heaven's sake.
wasn't allowed.
(12:04):
But she made friends with Plank,went along to his, lectures as
an auditor, apparently, so notas a student, but as an auditor.
Oh, so she was undercover.
Uh, she loved his lectures,raved about them, uh, wanted to
Do her own research and soapproached Heinrich Rubens, who
(12:25):
was in charge of FriedrichWilhelm University.
and he said that she could workin his lab.
Crucially, he also said thatthere was someone in the
Chemistry Institute, Otto Hahn,who was looking to collaborate
with a physicist.
And he's collaborated withfemale physicists before, during
(12:46):
his time in Montreal.
he'd studied radioactivesubstances So he needs, he needs
a partner in this.
Needs a buddy.
Yeah.
So here we go again with, ohyeah, she's an incredible woman.
Yep.
And we can have her here, butshe can't do all of this other
stuff.
So she actually wasn't allowedinto the main university.
(13:08):
grounds, where she was supposedto be collaborating with Otto
Hahn, but she wasn't allowed inthe labs, because women weren't
allowed in the labs.
I don't know, maybe thoughttheir hair would set on fire or
something.
Yeah, I immediately thought shewould burst into flames.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
So, The head of chemistry thereset up a former woodworking shop
(13:30):
for Otto and Lisa to use.
She had the advantage that ithad a separate entrance that you
could get to without having togo through the university.
So she could work in thiswoodworking shop, but they
couldn't really do experimentsthere.
Um, yeah, of course, it's awoodworking shop.
It's a woodworking shop, youcan't do nuclear experiments
(13:50):
there.
Pick a Bunsen burner in thecorner, off you go.
The toilets were in theuniversity.
She wasn't allowed in theuniversity.
So, if she wanted to go to theloo, she had to go to a
restaurant down the street.
bless her.
Just this sort of thing.
Eventually, they did installtoilets, but then there was
uproar from a lot of thechemistry department.
(14:12):
So, the chemistry departmentthere were really, the whole,
not happy about a woman beingadmitted to do research.
I wonder how she felt becauseshe's proved herself so many
times over by this point Yeah,like I know she's still
relatively early on in hercareer by the sounds of it But
like she's got a doctorate.
(14:34):
She's done those exams.
She's had a really strongsuccess With the experiment
where she could concludesomething that a man couldn't
and I wonder how must beheartbreaking every time she
really thought about it.
Yeah, and the passion for whatshe was doing must be higher
than that though.
I just find it utterlyheartbreaking.
(14:55):
Yeah, it is.
It's a really hard listen, isn'tit?
Yeah, and this, I mean, this isin 1913, so seven years after
she's got her doctorate.
So she's, She's seasoned.
Yeah, she's experienced andrespected amongst some people.
It's just like that, the oldguard of the, I imagine, the
sort of smoky rooms of 19thcentury.
(15:19):
scientists who have never had toreally speak to a woman in their
time apart from checking thatthe children are okay.
It's elitism, isn't it?
At this stage, both Meitner andHahn are unpaid.
Which is not untypical for thetime and they live off
allowances from their fathers.
Hahn sort of becomes aprofessor, in early 1907.
(15:43):
Meitner doesn't.
You know, they're working on thesame things.
But Han's work, they worktogether on atomic processes,
nuclear processes, radiation,and they're detecting tiny, tiny
amounts of particular isotopesof particular elements that
(16:03):
they're trying to detect throughradioactivity.
And this is really, Sort ofcutting edge stuff.
And so they're dismissed by alot of the other chemists in the
department.
So not only is like shedismissed for being a woman, but
she's dismissed because of thekind of work that she's doing.
But, The physics department wasmuch friendlier.
Yay! Much friendlier, much morewelcoming.
(16:26):
Correct.
And she became really goodfriends with a lot of the
physicists there, including MaxPlanck.
And some others that hadn'theard of before.
were really great We've run outof names to drop to be fair.
I think I have actually, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, and Einstein comes up later.
What?
Yeah.
(16:46):
So, during these first few yearsthat, Meitner and Hahn were
working together, they coauthored nine papers.
but they were interested inslightly different aspects of
the same process, as you mightexpect from a chemist and a
physicist.
Hahn was concerned withdiscovering new elements and
like, Ooh, something's happened.
So you have these decay chainswhere it goes from this element
(17:08):
to this element this element,which is also radioactive, and
that decays into this element,and you're sort of stepping
down, and these elements aregradually losing mass, turning
into other elements.
Hahn's main focus was indiscovering these new elements,
and filling in.
At the time, the periodic tablestill has gaps in it.
So you look at a periodic tablenow, and the numbers go up
(17:29):
nicely, and they're allbrilliantly grouped together,
and we don't have any gaps inbetween.
the elements that we know about.
We may discover heavier elementsin the future.
I see.
At this point there were stillgaps in there and he wanted to
fill those gaps in.
And it was tidy.
He's tidy, yeah.
Whereas, uh, Lisa was moreinterested in understanding the
(17:52):
radiation that they gave off andhow this radiation worked.
In 1912, both of them move tothe new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Chemistry in Berlin.
Oh my god, the times.
So, yeah.
The times that are ahead.
1912 Kaiser Wilhelm, oh god.
(18:14):
Um, Um, Okay, let's go, let's,uh, let's learn.
audio1947845591 (18:20):
It's an institute for chemistry.
Hahn accepts an offer.
He becomes a junior assistant incharge of a section.
he gets the title of professor.
He gets a salary equivalent toabout 30, 000 euros.
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute isa private institution.
It doesn't have a policyexcluding women.
(18:44):
Loopholes.
But it won't, it won't pay her.
So she works as a guest.
Still supported by her father.
Supported by her father until hedies.
Ooh.
So she's Not got support andShe's not getting paid for the
work that she's doing on equalfooting with her same age
(19:07):
scientific partner So worriedthat she'd have to basically go
back home.
Max Planck, name drop Andappoints her as his assistant,
where she goes through markingpapers, basically, of his
students.
So assistant is the absolutelowest run on the ladder, but
(19:31):
she's got something, she's gotsome salary to get by on, she
can continue doing her research,and she's actually in the whole
of Prussia.
Prussia.
She is the first femalescientific assistant.
I mean, it's a tricky one, isn'tit?
Because she's, it's great.
That's amazing.
And a very cool thing for him todo.
But Otto wasn't, having to findthe time to mark the papers.
(19:56):
I know, right?
Yeah.
I'm finding it really difficultwith, Lisa to sort of get my
head around how respected sheseems to be.
And yet they treat her likeshit.
Trickster position, isn't it?
Yeah, because like she'spresented to Wilhelm at the
(20:17):
opening of this institute.
So he comes along to open theinstitute and they proudly push
her in front of him to meet theKaiser.
do you think they're tokenism?
Well, maybe, yeah.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure it is tokenism,because all of these, like for
Plank to appoint her, to be soworried about losing her, that
(20:38):
he gives her any job he can justto keep her there.
So I think she really is wellrespected, and they are equally,
hamstrung by the system.
There is gradually change.
So a year after this, shebecomes an associate.
Title wise, she's on the samelevel as Han now, but her salary
(20:58):
is still far less.
And they actually renamed thelaboratory.
So it was originally the HanLaboratory.
It's now the Han MeitnerLaboratory.
So they are graduallyrecognising.
It's funny.
It's a funny one to navigate.
But they still pay, they stillpay us loads less.
(21:21):
Anyway, sort of money wise, itall comes good because one of
the isotopes they discoveredearlier on, a thorium isotope,
it turns out it's very usefulfor medical purposes and so they
get royalties from theproduction of that.
I know, 1914, they get about400, 000 euros, the equivalent
(21:43):
just in that one year from theroyalties of production of this
isotope that they discovered.
I'm worried I might push youover the edge with this.
Um, in a show of great andequality, uh, Han gives Meitner
10 percent of the royalties.
yeah, he keeps 90%, gives her10%.
He gives 90%, Simon! What?
(22:10):
Is that because he was like,focused on the tidying?
He was like, well, I'mdiscovering she was focused on
the by products, do you think?
Maybe, but it was Poor woman.
I know.
Oh, wow.
So she got, what's 10 percent ofthat?
So she got like 40, 000 maybe.
Yeah.
So it's something, it's a coupleof years.
(22:31):
She can eat.
Salary.
Yeah.
Be grateful.
again, she keeps getting offeredthese different academic
positions around the placebecause she's so well respected.
That's just bonkers.
Plank, once again, doesn't wanther to leave.
Um, so This Plank guy, flyingthe flag.
(22:52):
And they eventually moved to newaccommodation, because it turns
out doing radioactiveexperiments in a woodshop is not
a good idea.
We're in World War One now,1914.
Things are heating up.
Yeah, things are really heatingup.
She gets called up to activeduty, trains as an x ray nurse.
Does she?
That's fascinating.
(23:13):
Joins the Austrian army, andyeah, as a nurse for a year or
so before she's discharged in1916.
After she's discharged, in 1917,so World War I is still going on
and she returns to the KaiserWilhelm Institute.
and she is appointed as the headof her own section.
(23:33):
She then gets her own physicssection.
and the, what was the HahnMeitner Laboratory, is now two
separate laboratories, the HahnLaboratory and the Meitner
Laboratory.
Then together they discover anew element.
Ooh.
So they filled in one of thegaps.
They name it protactinium.
(23:54):
Protactinium.
which is a name that Lisasuggested.
she eventually becomes aprofessor in 1926, the first
female university physicsprofessor in Germany.
Nice.
And is a magnet for scientistsfrom around the world.
Scientists from around the worldwant to come and study with her.
(24:15):
Because she's doing thisgroundbreaking research.
And she's really got a name forherself at this point.
But we're heading into the 30s.
So it's 1933 that Hitler wassworn in as Chancellor of
Germany.
And They institute a law, thelaw is called, the Law for the
Restoration of the ProfessionalCivil Service, which removes all
(24:37):
Jews from the civil service, andthis includes academia.
And although she is not apracticing Jew at this point,
she is still Jewish.
Yeah.
And manages to hang on for acouple of years, but is
eventually dismissed.
So these were, they were tryingto get her out, sort of by name,
(24:59):
her and Hahn were still incharge, but their assistants
were both members of the Naziparty and were both being given
more and more control, more andmore influence over the running
of this institute.
Fast forward to 1938, then she'sgot a real problem.
It's called Anschluss.
Another one.
Which is, uh, yeah.
(25:21):
Another problem.
Another problem.
Yeah, something calledAnschluss.
So this is where Germany annexedAustria, on the 12th of March
1938.
And so at this point she losesher Austrian citizenship.
so she's no longer officially anAustrian citizen.
She's a Jew in Germany.
(25:41):
It's so scary.
What do you do?
It's terrifying.
Being stripped of yourcitizenship, can you imagine?
Oh, it's awful, isn't it?
I mean, what do you do fromthere?
You've got I know! That's justwhat I was thinking, like, where
do you go?
Where do you turn?
You know?
Yeah.
What next?
You're not eligible for anythinganywhere.
(26:03):
Anywhere! And completelysomebody else decided that on
you.
they chose Yeah.
Your fate.
Yeah.
My heart goes out to her, itreally does.
Not in a pitying way.
I don't want to feel like we'repitying her, but she did not
have it easy.
She really didn't, no.
(26:23):
I mean, in a sense, there were alot of people in World War II.
obviously who were far worse offthan her and you just, look at
sort of Irina Sendler's episodeand what she was dealing with
the, the ghettos in Poland.
And in a sense, Lisa was quitelucky because she knew At the
time, in their field, thesequite powerful people, so people
(26:46):
like Niels Bohr, he was richenough to have a holiday home,
these were long establishedprofessors, they were
celebrities of the scientificworld, they had higher level
contacts, and fortunately theywere working to get her out of
the country.
So Niels Bohr offered her thislecturing job, but Denmark
(27:08):
wouldn't recognize her Austrianpassport as valid, so it
wouldn't give her a visa totravel there.
she couldn't leave for there,she couldn't leave for
Switzerland, on 4th of July ofthat year, 1938, it was
confirmed that academicswouldn't be granted permission
to travel abroad.
So initially other countriesweren't letting her in.
Now Germany wasn't letting herleave.
(27:31):
And again, this story for me isjust full of these strange
paradoxes and juxtapositionswhere on the one hand, Nazi
Germany wants to eradicate theJews, on the other hand, they
want their scientific knowledge.
Knowledge is power, isn't it?
I guess that's a theme we'recoming to.
Um, four people together, NielsBohr, Peter Debbier, another
(27:53):
fellow called Costa and anotherfellow called Fokker, wanted
Meitner to be able to come tothe Netherlands.
Yeah.
spoke to one of the heads of theborder guards.
And he had a friend who was alocal politician from the border
area through which they thoughtshe might be able to gain entry.
(28:17):
And so he petitioned thispolitician spoke directly to the
guards on the border tobasically when she comes past
looking for entry whistle andlook the other way.
Don't ask any questions abouther, And so the, there was a
plan, to basically smuggle herout the country.
And the plan involved herturning up to work at a normal
time.
(28:38):
doing her work, leaving at abouteight o'clock.
She only packed summer clothes.
She only had the equivalent ofabout 40 pounds on her, but they
gave her, a diamond engagementring.
So if she did get into trouble,she could try bribing or sort of
pawning it for money orsomething.
And also, um, it would make herlook like she was married.
(28:59):
Yes.
She spent the night at Han'shouse and then went to a railway
station and met this personcalled Costa.
They made a public show ofpretending to have met by chance
and then travelled together to arailway station on the border
and then from that railwaystation they crossed the border.
(29:20):
without any incident.
This got her into theNetherlands.
This is so smart, by the way.
It's just, and I love the detailhow many people that took.
She must have lots ofinterpersonal skills to get all
these people on board.
she must have been able to sellherself.
And it's an internationaloperation.
(29:40):
Deception involving politiciansand border guards.
You listed so many people inthat one moment.
They all would have had to havespoken to her at some point or
had recognition of who she wasat some point.
Very impressive.
And this fellow, Costa,discovered, an element called
hafnium.
(30:01):
Uh huh.
And another physicist, Pauli,famous for the Pauli Exclusion
Principle, wrote a telegram toCosta and informed him he was
now as famous for the abductionof Lisa Meitner as he was for
the discovery of hafnium.
Oh my gosh, I love that.
a little later, Sweden, hadactually granted her permission
(30:22):
officially to enter Sweden onher Austrian passport.
So she wasn't spending much timein the Netherlands, that was
just to get her out of Germany.
And then she moved on to Sweden.
Meanwhile, another deception.
Han had told everyone at theKaiser Wilhelm Institute,
because they were asking, Oh.
Where's Lisa gone?
(30:42):
He said that she'd gone home toVienna to visit her relatives.
So while this was going on,while she was doing all of this
traveling, He was sort of doingthe deception back there.
He's kind of redeemed himself,hasn't he, Han?
He's had a bit of redemption.
She's not allowed any of herbelongings.
The Germans refused to send anyof her belongings out of the
country.
So she's She has just got twosuitcases of summer clothes and
(31:05):
40 bucks and a diamond ring.
And she's starting afresh thenin, in Sweden.
so the big thing.
We haven't done the big thing.
We haven't done the big thing.
So the big thing, Han is stillback in Germany.
And he's conducting someexperiments trying to find new
(31:27):
elements.
And he's taking some uranium,famously friendly uranium, and
bombarding it with, you know,neutrons and see what happens.
Is he okay?
Is he having a rough time?
What's going on with Han?
Has anyone spoken to Han lately?
(31:48):
Yeah.
So the way that Han's beenworking on, um, investigating
these nuclear processes islooking at the decay of
radioactive elements and seeingthat they start off heavy, they
decay, by decaying they losesome of their mass.
And something lighter comes out,and that lighter thing is
(32:08):
radioactive.
It loses some mass, it becomesanother, the next lighter
element or isotope, and down itgoes.
You eventually get to a pointwhere it's no longer
radioactive.
So it doesn't decay past acertain point.
Yeah, It's got nothing more tolose, it's stable.
It's stable, got it.
So he is, um, doing someexperiments where he's
(32:30):
bombarding these uranium nucleusnuclei with neutrons and seeing
what happens.
And he's thinking, oh, maybe Ican, because he's, he's on the
search for element 93.
Um, and he's thinking, you mightfind it.
That sounds like a children'sbook, the search for element 93.
It's like Catch 22, the sequel.
(32:54):
But he sees something odd inthat he bombards this uranium
with a neutron, and then he doessome chemistry tests on the
resulting atoms to find out whatit is, and he's left with
barium.
Now barium has got like 40percent of the mass of uranium,
so he's thinking this isn'tfitting with the model of
(33:15):
gradually stepping down in massthat we've seen before.
Something else, particularlystrange, is happening and they
don't know the means ofradioactive decay by which this
can happen.
It's going way further than itshould and it's happening way
more quickly than it should.
Normally you've got to wait forthe half life of each one that
(33:36):
you get to.
So the half life, it could beseconds, it could be days, and
you just sort of wait for it todecay and get lighter and then
you test it and see what you'releft with.
Um, but this is like 60 percentlighter.
He's baffled, So he wrote to,Lisa, with these results, and
was like, I don't know what thehell's happening here.
(33:57):
And she's quoted as sayingThat's nice that he reached out,
that's really cool.
So they're still in touch acrossall of this time.
Um, she Writes back to him sayat the moment the assumption of
such a thoroughgoing breakupseems very difficult to me The
nuclear physics we haveexperienced so many surprises
that one cannot unconditionallysay it is impossible Honey's
(34:18):
they're thinking.
I must have made a mistake.
My experiments gone wrong.
This result can't be right.
Mine is like She's open to it.
Yeah the thing that she isn'topen to and that she completely
dismisses is the Also Honda'smessed up She doesn't accept,
(34:40):
she's so confident in thequality of his work that she
doesn't think he's made an errorin the discovery of barium.
Oh come on, this is adorable.
Yes, yes, yes.
Of course it's not you, we allneed that person at work.
Of course it's not you.
So along with, uh, a familymember, I think nephew of hers,
(35:03):
who is, who also happens to be aphysicist.
As a thing, family business.
Family business, yeah.
They sit down and have a thinkof how it could be possible.
Um, basically in order for, ifHan hasn't messed up and what
he's done is split the atom.
(35:23):
Bloody hell.
And so they consider how thiscould be possible.
And how he's done it, and how inthe past they've never had
sufficient energy to chip awaymore than a tiny bit.
If you imagine a massiveboulder, they've just been there
with a little chisel on theoutside and they've taken off a
proton or an electron, just atiny tiny bit, and it's all
(35:46):
these lots of little chips.
But what he's done is thrown aping pong ball at a boulder.
And the thing is cracked inhalf.
Yep.
Yeah.
So they come up with this model,um, that they call the liquid
drop model of the nucleus.
Her family member, Frisch, soMeitner and Frisch, discussed
this while sat down on a treetrunk, having been on a walk in
(36:09):
the snow.
Yeah, this is where the bestthinking happens.
Yeah, right.
When you said earlier, like,they sat down to have a think, I
was like, I could totallypicture that.
Like, I could totally picturethat.
Well, we just need to thinkabout this, plonk.
Yeah, a nice little detail isthat when they were in the snow,
uh, Frisch had his skis on, uh,Lisa was insistent that she
(36:32):
would be just as fast as himwithout.
Nice.
And she was.
So she was on foot.
I love her.
I love her.
I love her.
Yeah.
so they did some calculations.
Just to see if it was plausiblethat this could possibly have
happened.
And they decided it waspossible, but they didn't know
(36:54):
where the energy was coming fromto drive them away.
Um, so this energy, there musthave been energy, and this
energy would have just appeared,and how can you create energy?
Well, you can't create energy,you can transform it, and the
transformation of that isEinstein's equation, E equals mc
squared, where energy is themass times the speed of light
(37:16):
squared, and they basically wentthrough, doing some more
calculations, and found thatTheoretically in this they would
lose enough mass which wouldgive the exact amount of energy
that they would need to repelThese two are parked at the
speed that they were seeing inthe experiment and leave them
(37:37):
with the barium that they wereexpecting.
So they, Meitner and Frisch, hadgone through and interpreted
Han's results in the correctway.
Rather than thinking, oh, hemust be wrong, they had come up
with the mechanism and proven itmathematically.
Meitner and Frisch come up withsome more experiments to, give a
(37:58):
bit more meat to their claims,and they publish a paper.
Hahn publishes his own paper,one part of it on 6th of
January, part on the 10th ofFebruary, 1939.
Frisch and Meitner publish theirpaper a day 11th of February.
And the scientific communitygoes crazy because this is the
(38:21):
first example, the discovery, ofwhat Meitner has termed, what
Lisa has termed, nuclearfission.
And nuclear fission, thissplitting apart of atoms, the
cascade effect of which you seein a nuclear bomb.
Yeah.
Releases colossal amounts ofenergy very, very quickly.
(38:42):
The controlled splitting ofwhich is what powers nuclear
reactors.
That's why you have fuel rodsand you have control rods that
absorb some of the things thatare split off so that they don't
then create a cascade reaction.
This is world changing.
Yeah, and it's this that thenfires off the further
(39:02):
investigation into, oh, that's alot of energy that's been
released.
We've just converted mass toenergy.
Maybe we can make a bomb out ofit.
Um, it's that.
Because that's your firstthought, obviously.
It's the first thought,obviously.
It's the first thing is like,how can I use this to destroy
things?
Yeah.
And now that nuclear fission isa concept, I recommend you watch
Oppenheimer, the movie, and thatwill tell you in much better
(39:23):
detail.
Um, the rest of the story givesus nuclear reactors, but Lisa
doesn't want anything to do.
She's absolutely horrified bythe idea.
that they would make a bomb outof this.
She's offered a place to workwith the British team on the
Manhattan Project, and she justtells them to do one.
Then 1945 the royal swedishacademy of sciences Announced
(39:48):
that Otto Hahn had been awardedthe Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
his discovery of the fission ofheavy atomic nuclei.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Otto, he's fallen off again.
Otto's going through quite thecharacter arc.
He did a thing.
He did a thing.
(40:09):
And was baffled by it.
She figured out exactly what hadhappened.
Yeah.
And told him where to look formore information and designed
the experiments that he thenwrote up in a paper and got the
Nobel Prize for.
Did he allude to, like, anybodyelse?
I don't think he mentioned herin his speech.
He basked.
Basked in his own glory.
(40:29):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Quite the villain in the end,Otto.
I first came across Lisa becauseI was looking for, female
scientists who should have got aNobel Prize.
Oh my god, I could just do awhole series on these.
It's devastating how often thishas happened, so look out for
season two.
Yeah.
in her career, Lisa wasnominated 49 times for Nobel
(40:54):
Prizes in physics and chemistry.
That's great.
Yeah, we don't know her name.
49 times.
49.
Gosh.
It's like a lifetime ofnominees, isn't it?
Yeah.
She's like the Beyonce ofchemistry.
She's the Beyonce, yeah.
but she, there was controversyat the time that she wasn't
(41:15):
mentioned.
Her fellow physicists weren'thappy.
Yeah, its of why, but it's justnot being a dick, isn't it?
It's like, yeah.
And then this is what a lot ofthese stories boil down to.
don't be a dickhead.
Yeah.
audio1484212765 (41:27):
Did she ever reference the fact that she
didn't get any recognition?
Did Lisa?
So I think she was quite upsetby that.
Well, upset by it all, really.
And like, throughout she wasgenerally upset.
And it's like you were sayingearlier, that her passion for
the work outweighed her, howmuch she begrudged the situation
(41:49):
that she was in and thetreatment that she got.
And it was just Another notentirely unexpected snub.
And they named element 109 as mynerium in her honor.
Yeah.
Yay! That's cool.
One of the elements that I guessOtto Hahn wishes he could have
discovered was then named afterher.
Yeah, he didn't tidy up thatone, did he?
(42:10):
No.
Serves you right, Otto.
I think hers is the only,Minerium is the only element
heavier than Uranium named aftera woman where the woman is not,
from fiction.
Wow, that's so depressing.
Because the other, like all theother ones are from mythology.
(42:33):
Oh, right.
Oh, Simon.
Well, that's a cool fact though.
You could whip that out at a pubquiz, couldn't you?
really sure what the conclusionis here.
The conclusion is just like,really depressing.
(42:53):
No, come on.
She achieved so much.
All those nominations.
And I think my conclusion fromit is that knowledge is power,
like, she positioned herselfduring the most turbulent time
of the 20th century in aposition where she was required
(43:14):
and needed and actually her, Herlegacy after that just proves
it.
it just sucks that she didn'tget an easier ride.
Imagine how, how much more shecould have achieved if she was
given the same ride as Alto oranybody else in that situation.
(43:34):
Yeah.
And.
Like if she didn't have to havea second job.
Well, she's got a crater on themoon named after her.
Has she?
Yeah.
Oh.
I wonder how she felt.
Oh.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, thanks.
It's a crater on Venus namedafter her.
An asteroid.
(43:55):
Why are these craters?
An institute in Berlin.
Element 109 that we've covered.
Yeah.
Um, there's a biannual LiseMeitner Prize for excellent
research in nuclear science.
Love that.
There's a Gothenburg LiseMeitner Award, that's awarded
annually to a scientist who'smade a breakthrough in physics.
(44:17):
Mm hmm.
building at the Free Universityof Berlin that was once the
Klaus Wilhelm Institute, and hadbeen known as the Otto Hahn
building since 1956.
That is a slap in the face.
It's a real slap, isn't it?
Was renamed to the Hahn Meitnerbuilding.
(44:37):
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So he stayed.
He stayed.
I thought he was replacedinitially.
But, he hasn't got a statue.
She's got a statue, um, in thegarden of Humboldt University in
Berlin, next to similar statuesof Hermann von Helmholtz and Max
Planck.
Yay! Planck's back for the end.
So their friendship endured.
(44:58):
Yeah.
Oh.
Oh, well, what a story.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Lisa might know all three and ahalf hours of her Well thanks
everyone, thanks for listening.
Oh yeah, thanks folks.
Thanks.
I'm Simon.
I'm Vicky, and this has been SheChanged History.
(45:18):
If you enjoyed it, please let usknow and let other people know.
through rating and subscribingand sharing.
If you want us to cover aparticular person, let us know
at shechangedhistoryatgmail.
com.
or if you just want to shoutabout how amazing the women in
your lives are, like don't feellike they have to be, famous
(45:42):
women or anything, just shout.
We'd love to hear your stories.
Definitely.
And I'm pretty sure we'll havean episode next week as well.
Yep.
So we'll see you.
Thanks everyone.
See you soon.
Thanks.
Bye.
Bye
excited.
Okay.
Ready?
I'm ready.
Cool.
Hi, Vicky.
Hi, Simon.
Hi, how you doing?
And welcome everyone to SheChanged History.
Thank you.
I'm in my Christmas jumper forthose watching clips on YouTube
or Mm hmm.
Or our Insta, I'm in fullfestive swing, are you feeling
(00:28):
Christmassy?
Yeah, my wreath's up and itlooks much better than I
thought, so that's nice.
I tried to do some Christmasshopping today but I just
couldn't.
I couldn't get in the vibe, so Iabandoned ship and came home.
so I think we'll get in there,and then we've got this
Christmas meal tonight, sohopefully that'll help with
Christmas.
Choir Christmas meal.
Choir Christmas meal, yeah,looking forward to it.
(00:48):
I'm very excited, um, butControversially, there wasn't a
Christmas menu that was shared.
It was only food.
Yeah, well, I'm actually quitehappy about that.
I generally don't, yeah, I'm notkeen on restaurants that do a
Christmas menu because it'salways like a worse version of
their normal menu.
(01:09):
Oh, that's, I feel like that'sso unfounded.
What's going on there?
Did you just have a bad timeonce?
Yeah, I've had one badexperience and therefore
dismissed Christmas menusforevermore.
Forever and ever and ever.
Well, we were going to book thatItalian in Gloucester for my
(01:29):
birthday meal this Friday.
Yeah.
But they were, because it'sDecember, they were forcing us
to have the Christmas menu.
Which doesn't have on it thebest dishes on their menu, and
it's more expensive, and you'vegot to pay in advance.
So what are we doing?
Going to Monmouth.
Okay, is that what I've, that'sItalian as well in Monmouth?
(01:50):
It is, yeah.
Oh, okay.
I was like, I've orderedItalian.
I was panicking then.
I was like, what's happening?
I've definitely ordered Italian.
Oh my gosh.
And talking of celebrations, alittle fun fact before we start
is that we're recording on the11th of December.
We don't know when this willair.
Um, but, um, But yesterday onthe 10th of December was Ada
Lovelace's birthday.
(02:12):
Oh, excellent.
Yeah, so I shared our Adaepisode because obviously you
did a great episode on AdaLovelace.
I can't remember what number sheis.
Number two.
She was right out the gate, soAda Lovelace.
So, episode two, the rebelliousromantic who birthed the digital
age.
And you can celebrate Ada bylistening to the episode, rating
(02:33):
and reviewing.
These, all the things, all thethings to keep us relevant.
What have you got for us today,Simon?
Well, today we've got anabsolute banger, of science.
Love it.
an Austrian physicist.
So today we shine spotlight onLisa Meitner, a brilliant
physicist whose contributions tonuclear science were nothing
(02:56):
short of revolutionary.
Meitner's journey is one ofintellectual curiosity,
unwavering perseverance, andunfortunately, It's a stark
reminder of the challenges facedby women in science,
particularly during thetumultuous first half of the
20th century.
Join us as we explore the lifeof this remarkable woman from
her early years in Vienna to herdramatic escape from Nazi
Germany, her groundbreakingscientific achievements, and the
(03:19):
controversial Nobel Prize snubthat marred her well deserved
recognition.
Nobel Prize snub, That soundsVery much the purpose of this
podcast.
Right up my street.
You need to be informed andfurious in equal measure.
They're the feelings I want tofeel when we do this, so yeah.
(03:40):
And also we've got an escapefrom the Nazis as well, so I
feel like it's got all thehallmarks of a She Changed
History, yeah.
Very cool.
All right.
And so our sources today, are anobituary from New Scientist, a
Washington Post article, TheWoman Behind the Bomb, and a
fantastic book, Lisa Mightner, ALife in Physics, written by Ruth
(04:02):
Lewis Syme.
Okay, let's go.
So Lise Meitner was born in 1878in Vienna, to a Jewish family,
quite well off, educated.
Her father was one of the firstJewish lawyers admitted to
practice in Austria.
Oh My gosh, they're quiteforward They're forward
(04:24):
thinking.
Yeah Yeah, and she was broughtup with this sort of forward
thinking Freethinking mindset,at the time education for women
in Austria, wasn't prioritized.
They were, at most, they couldbe a teacher.
Okay.
her father wasn't on board withthat and encouraged them, to be
(04:45):
inquisitive and follow educationand follow their interests.
And so at the age of eight, shestarted, doing her own little
science experiments.
Like Ada, just like we weretalking about.
Just like Ada, yeah.
Like Ada Livingston the third.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she was looking at thecolors on sort of Films and oil
(05:07):
slicks and kept a little diaryof her scientific experiments
under her pillow Veryromanticized.
Yes, isn't it?
Right?
at the time women couldn't goto, go into higher education, so
they weren't allowed to progresspast a certain point, and you
(05:28):
needed your, higher educationdiploma to then get into
university, something called amatura.
She was keen and her family werewealthy.
So much like Ada again, she wasable to have private tuition.
Nice.
And sat a sort of independentexternal Matura exam, she along
(05:48):
with 13 other girls sat it, onlyfour of them passed, so she
passed and got into, universityof Vienna.
Okay.
And.
Well, one of the lecturers therewas Ludwig Boltzmann, She loved
his lectures.
And so she entered university in1901, and in 1906 she got her
(06:13):
doctorate.
She was only the second woman toearn a doctoral degree in
physics in the, in theUniversity of Vienna.
Nice.
Um, three years after the first.
Does she talk about her time atVienna at all?
Like, was she ostracized, or?
Uh, not particularly, althoughcoming up, there is some, when
(06:38):
she gets to Germany.
She's heading off to Germany.
Yeah, I can find.
So her dissertation was onthermal conduction in, in
homogenous bodies.
Haven't read it.
I'm sure it's great, but it gothurt.
You didn't read it as researchfor the podcast, Simon.
I didn't read it, I'm afraid.
(06:58):
Simon, the disservice you'redoing on listeners.
so Along the way, she was asked,she sort of got a bit of a
reputation that she was good atdoing experiments.
She was happy to learn andinvestigate independently, so a
fellow called, Paul Ehrenfestasked her to investigate, an
(07:21):
article that Lord Rayleigh hadwritten on This is like a, um,
physic name drop.
It really is.
You sound like you've gone to aHollywood party and you're just
dropping all these names.
Oh yeah, yeah, I was justspeaking to Nils Paul the other
day, yeah.
He's a great guy, great guy,yeah, so friendly.
Paul are in real life as well.
(07:41):
so Lord Rayleigh had done anexperiment which had produced
results that he wasn't able toexplain.
she had a look at it.
and was able to explain theresults.
And then made furtherpredictions on it based on her,
the explanation that she'dgiven, which she then verified
through her own experiments.
Come on, Lee, this is cool.
(08:02):
Right, she's like 28 at thetime, has only recently got her
doctorate and already she'smeeting these bigwigs of
science.
And contributing as well.
And contributing.
Yeah.
A little bit down the line shewas introduced to the concept of
radioactivity, still quite a newconcept at this time.
Remember this is around the timeof Marie Curie.
(08:25):
So radioactivity, this newishphenomenon, she was introduced
to it and she started doing herown experiments.
She likes an experiment, we knowthat.
She loves an experiment.
Submitted her findings to ascientific journal.
And her experiment was one ofthe experiments that led, I'm
(08:46):
sorry it's another name drop,that led Ernest Rutherford to
predict the nuclear atom.
Wow, he's a big name to drop.
He's a big name drop.
He's huge.
Even Vicky's heard of him.
She brings out useful resultsthat other people enjoy and use.
She left the University ofVienna to go to the Friedrich
(09:09):
Wilhelm University in Berlin.
Berlin at this time was reallythe center of physics, physics
research.
and it's this institute thatphysicist Max Planck taught.
Max Planck, another massivename.
Is this like a special time forphysics?
This is an incredible time forphysics.
(09:31):
Yeah.
Absolutely incredible.
And it's all around this time.
So Einstein's getting his NobelPrize around this time.
There's so much research goinginto physics.
electromagnetism, radioactivityis just coming along, we're
starting to get an understandingof the nuclear model, the atomic
model, uh, quantum physics as aconcept is starting to be
(09:56):
recognised and be researched.
So yeah, Max Planck taught hereat the Friedrich Wilhelm
University in Berlin, um, Planckinvited her to his home for
nefarious reasons, but shealready had a bit of a
(10:16):
reputation because of theseexperiments that she'd done back
in Vienna because of the workthat she'd done at that event.
to Rutherford's future work.
Now, I think that meanssomething different today than
it did back then.
Yeah.
I should say up front, she nevermarried, never had children.
Interesting.
(10:38):
Okay.
So she's dedicated to the cause.
Yeah, she really is.
Yeah.
Max Plank, I find it weird.
He had twin daughters.
but, didn't agree with womenbeing admitted to university.
It's so internalised, isn't it?
It's, I don't understand howpeople can separate that type of
(11:02):
love.
Like, you either, to me, it'seither all encompassing,
unconditional, of course, andblind faith in a person, that
yes, you can do that.
I just, I can't.
I don't understand when you cantear it apart.
I love you, but I love you, butobviously you're never going to
(11:22):
amount to anything and you don'tdeserve to achieve all of these
things and you're not going tobe capable purely because you're
a woman.
I wish I'd had sons.
Like, he can't be saying that tohis daughters, but I mean, he is
saying that.
He is, through his actions.
Yeah, through his actions sothis was quite an unexpected, in
a sort of unexpected twist byPlank.
(11:44):
He invited Lisa to attend hislectures.
so she's fine.
She's okay.
She's okay.
And at this time, actually,women weren't really allowed to
attend lectures at theuniversity.
Despite her being a doctor.
Despite her having a doctoratein physics.
For heaven's sake.
wasn't allowed.
(12:04):
But she made friends with Plank,went along to his, lectures as
an auditor, apparently, so notas a student, but as an auditor.
Oh, so she was undercover.
Uh, she loved his lectures,raved about them, uh, wanted to
Do her own research and soapproached Heinrich Rubens, who
(12:25):
was in charge of FriedrichWilhelm University.
and he said that she could workin his lab.
Crucially, he also said thatthere was someone in the
Chemistry Institute, Otto Hahn,who was looking to collaborate
with a physicist.
And he's collaborated withfemale physicists before, during
(12:46):
his time in Montreal.
he'd studied radioactivesubstances So he needs, he needs
a partner in this.
Needs a buddy.
Yeah.
So here we go again with, ohyeah, she's an incredible woman.
Yep.
And we can have her here, butshe can't do all of this other
stuff.
So she actually wasn't allowedinto the main university.
(13:08):
grounds, where she was supposedto be collaborating with Otto
Hahn, but she wasn't allowed inthe labs, because women weren't
allowed in the labs.
I don't know, maybe thoughttheir hair would set on fire or
something.
Yeah, I immediately thought shewould burst into flames.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
So, The head of chemistry thereset up a former woodworking shop
(13:30):
for Otto and Lisa to use.
She had the advantage that ithad a separate entrance that you
could get to without having togo through the university.
So she could work in thiswoodworking shop, but they
couldn't really do experimentsthere.
Um, yeah, of course, it's awoodworking shop.
It's a woodworking shop, youcan't do nuclear experiments
(13:50):
there.
Pick a Bunsen burner in thecorner, off you go.
The toilets were in theuniversity.
She wasn't allowed in theuniversity.
So, if she wanted to go to theloo, she had to go to a
restaurant down the street.
bless her.
Just this sort of thing.
Eventually, they did installtoilets, but then there was
uproar from a lot of thechemistry department.
(14:12):
So, the chemistry departmentthere were really, the whole,
not happy about a woman beingadmitted to do research.
I wonder how she felt becauseshe's proved herself so many
times over by this point Yeah,like I know she's still
relatively early on in hercareer by the sounds of it But
like she's got a doctorate.
(14:34):
She's done those exams.
She's had a really strongsuccess With the experiment
where she could concludesomething that a man couldn't
and I wonder how must beheartbreaking every time she
really thought about it.
Yeah, and the passion for whatshe was doing must be higher
than that though.
I just find it utterlyheartbreaking.
(14:55):
Yeah, it is.
It's a really hard listen, isn'tit?
Yeah, and this, I mean, this isin 1913, so seven years after
she's got her doctorate.
So she's, She's seasoned.
Yeah, she's experienced andrespected amongst some people.
It's just like that, the oldguard of the, I imagine, the
sort of smoky rooms of 19thcentury.
(15:19):
scientists who have never had toreally speak to a woman in their
time apart from checking thatthe children are okay.
It's elitism, isn't it?
At this stage, both Meitner andHahn are unpaid.
Which is not untypical for thetime and they live off
allowances from their fathers.
Hahn sort of becomes aprofessor, in early 1907.
(15:43):
Meitner doesn't.
You know, they're working on thesame things.
But Han's work, they worktogether on atomic processes,
nuclear processes, radiation,and they're detecting tiny, tiny
amounts of particular isotopesof particular elements that
(16:03):
they're trying to detect throughradioactivity.
And this is really, Sort ofcutting edge stuff.
And so they're dismissed by alot of the other chemists in the
department.
So not only is like shedismissed for being a woman, but
she's dismissed because of thekind of work that she's doing.
But, The physics department wasmuch friendlier.
Yay! Much friendlier, much morewelcoming.
(16:26):
Correct.
And she became really goodfriends with a lot of the
physicists there, including MaxPlanck.
And some others that hadn'theard of before.
were really great We've run outof names to drop to be fair.
I think I have actually, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, and Einstein comes up later.
What?
Yeah.
(16:46):
So, during these first few yearsthat, Meitner and Hahn were
working together, they coauthored nine papers.
but they were interested inslightly different aspects of
the same process, as you mightexpect from a chemist and a
physicist.
Hahn was concerned withdiscovering new elements and
like, Ooh, something's happened.
So you have these decay chainswhere it goes from this element
(17:08):
to this element this element,which is also radioactive, and
that decays into this element,and you're sort of stepping
down, and these elements aregradually losing mass, turning
into other elements.
Hahn's main focus was indiscovering these new elements,
and filling in.
At the time, the periodic tablestill has gaps in it.
So you look at a periodic tablenow, and the numbers go up
(17:29):
nicely, and they're allbrilliantly grouped together,
and we don't have any gaps inbetween.
the elements that we know about.
We may discover heavier elementsin the future.
I see.
At this point there were stillgaps in there and he wanted to
fill those gaps in.
And it was tidy.
He's tidy, yeah.
Whereas, uh, Lisa was moreinterested in understanding the
(17:52):
radiation that they gave off andhow this radiation worked.
In 1912, both of them move tothe new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Chemistry in Berlin.
Oh my god, the times.
So, yeah.
The times that are ahead.
1912 Kaiser Wilhelm, oh god.
(18:14):
Um, Um, Okay, let's go, let's,uh, let's learn.
audio1947845591 (18:20):
It's an institute for chemistry.
Hahn accepts an offer.
He becomes a junior assistant incharge of a section.
he gets the title of professor.
He gets a salary equivalent toabout 30, 000 euros.
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute isa private institution.
It doesn't have a policyexcluding women.
(18:44):
Loopholes.
But it won't, it won't pay her.
So she works as a guest.
Still supported by her father.
Supported by her father until hedies.
Ooh.
So she's Not got support andShe's not getting paid for the
work that she's doing on equalfooting with her same age
(19:07):
scientific partner So worriedthat she'd have to basically go
back home.
Max Planck, name drop Andappoints her as his assistant,
where she goes through markingpapers, basically, of his
students.
So assistant is the absolutelowest run on the ladder, but
(19:31):
she's got something, she's gotsome salary to get by on, she
can continue doing her research,and she's actually in the whole
of Prussia.
Prussia.
She is the first femalescientific assistant.
I mean, it's a tricky one, isn'tit?
Because she's, it's great.
That's amazing.
And a very cool thing for him todo.
But Otto wasn't, having to findthe time to mark the papers.
(19:56):
I know, right?
Yeah.
I'm finding it really difficultwith, Lisa to sort of get my
head around how respected sheseems to be.
And yet they treat her likeshit.
Trickster position, isn't it?
Yeah, because like she'spresented to Wilhelm at the
(20:17):
opening of this institute.
So he comes along to open theinstitute and they proudly push
her in front of him to meet theKaiser.
do you think they're tokenism?
Well, maybe, yeah.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure it is tokenism,because all of these, like for
Plank to appoint her, to be soworried about losing her, that
(20:38):
he gives her any job he can justto keep her there.
So I think she really is wellrespected, and they are equally,
hamstrung by the system.
There is gradually change.
So a year after this, shebecomes an associate.
Title wise, she's on the samelevel as Han now, but her salary
(20:58):
is still far less.
And they actually renamed thelaboratory.
So it was originally the HanLaboratory.
It's now the Han MeitnerLaboratory.
So they are graduallyrecognising.
It's funny.
It's a funny one to navigate.
But they still pay, they stillpay us loads less.
(21:21):
Anyway, sort of money wise, itall comes good because one of
the isotopes they discoveredearlier on, a thorium isotope,
it turns out it's very usefulfor medical purposes and so they
get royalties from theproduction of that.
I know, 1914, they get about400, 000 euros, the equivalent
(21:43):
just in that one year from theroyalties of production of this
isotope that they discovered.
I'm worried I might push youover the edge with this.
Um, in a show of great andequality, uh, Han gives Meitner
10 percent of the royalties.
yeah, he keeps 90%, gives her10%.
He gives 90%, Simon! What?
(22:10):
Is that because he was like,focused on the tidying?
He was like, well, I'mdiscovering she was focused on
the by products, do you think?
Maybe, but it was Poor woman.
I know.
Oh, wow.
So she got, what's 10 percent ofthat?
So she got like 40, 000 maybe.
Yeah.
So it's something, it's a coupleof years.
(22:31):
She can eat.
Salary.
Yeah.
Be grateful.
again, she keeps getting offeredthese different academic
positions around the placebecause she's so well respected.
That's just bonkers.
Plank, once again, doesn't wanther to leave.
Um, so This Plank guy, flyingthe flag.
(22:52):
And they eventually moved to newaccommodation, because it turns
out doing radioactiveexperiments in a woodshop is not
a good idea.
We're in World War One now,1914.
Things are heating up.
Yeah, things are really heatingup.
She gets called up to activeduty, trains as an x ray nurse.
Does she?
That's fascinating.
(23:13):
Joins the Austrian army, andyeah, as a nurse for a year or
so before she's discharged in1916.
After she's discharged, in 1917,so World War I is still going on
and she returns to the KaiserWilhelm Institute.
and she is appointed as the headof her own section.
(23:33):
She then gets her own physicssection.
and the, what was the HahnMeitner Laboratory, is now two
separate laboratories, the HahnLaboratory and the Meitner
Laboratory.
Then together they discover anew element.
Ooh.
So they filled in one of thegaps.
They name it protactinium.
(23:54):
Protactinium.
which is a name that Lisasuggested.
she eventually becomes aprofessor in 1926, the first
female university physicsprofessor in Germany.
Nice.
And is a magnet for scientistsfrom around the world.
Scientists from around the worldwant to come and study with her.
(24:15):
Because she's doing thisgroundbreaking research.
And she's really got a name forherself at this point.
But we're heading into the 30s.
So it's 1933 that Hitler wassworn in as Chancellor of
Germany.
And They institute a law, thelaw is called, the Law for the
Restoration of the ProfessionalCivil Service, which removes all
(24:37):
Jews from the civil service, andthis includes academia.
And although she is not apracticing Jew at this point,
she is still Jewish.
Yeah.
And manages to hang on for acouple of years, but is
eventually dismissed.
So these were, they were tryingto get her out, sort of by name,
(24:59):
her and Hahn were still incharge, but their assistants
were both members of the Naziparty and were both being given
more and more control, more andmore influence over the running
of this institute.
Fast forward to 1938, then she'sgot a real problem.
It's called Anschluss.
Another one.
Which is, uh, yeah.
(25:21):
Another problem.
Another problem.
Yeah, something calledAnschluss.
So this is where Germany annexedAustria, on the 12th of March
1938.
And so at this point she losesher Austrian citizenship.
so she's no longer officially anAustrian citizen.
She's a Jew in Germany.
(25:41):
It's so scary.
What do you do?
It's terrifying.
Being stripped of yourcitizenship, can you imagine?
Oh, it's awful, isn't it?
I mean, what do you do fromthere?
You've got I know! That's justwhat I was thinking, like, where
do you go?
Where do you turn?
You know?
Yeah.
What next?
You're not eligible for anythinganywhere.
(26:03):
Anywhere! And completelysomebody else decided that on
you.
they chose Yeah.
Your fate.
Yeah.
My heart goes out to her, itreally does.
Not in a pitying way.
I don't want to feel like we'repitying her, but she did not
have it easy.
She really didn't, no.
(26:23):
I mean, in a sense, there were alot of people in World War II.
obviously who were far worse offthan her and you just, look at
sort of Irina Sendler's episodeand what she was dealing with
the, the ghettos in Poland.
And in a sense, Lisa was quitelucky because she knew At the
time, in their field, thesequite powerful people, so people
(26:46):
like Niels Bohr, he was richenough to have a holiday home,
these were long establishedprofessors, they were
celebrities of the scientificworld, they had higher level
contacts, and fortunately theywere working to get her out of
the country.
So Niels Bohr offered her thislecturing job, but Denmark
(27:08):
wouldn't recognize her Austrianpassport as valid, so it
wouldn't give her a visa totravel there.
she couldn't leave for there,she couldn't leave for
Switzerland, on 4th of July ofthat year, 1938, it was
confirmed that academicswouldn't be granted permission
to travel abroad.
So initially other countriesweren't letting her in.
Now Germany wasn't letting herleave.
(27:31):
And again, this story for me isjust full of these strange
paradoxes and juxtapositionswhere on the one hand, Nazi
Germany wants to eradicate theJews, on the other hand, they
want their scientific knowledge.
Knowledge is power, isn't it?
I guess that's a theme we'recoming to.
Um, four people together, NielsBohr, Peter Debbier, another
(27:53):
fellow called Costa and anotherfellow called Fokker, wanted
Meitner to be able to come tothe Netherlands.
Yeah.
spoke to one of the heads of theborder guards.
And he had a friend who was alocal politician from the border
area through which they thoughtshe might be able to gain entry.
(28:17):
And so he petitioned thispolitician spoke directly to the
guards on the border tobasically when she comes past
looking for entry whistle andlook the other way.
Don't ask any questions abouther, And so the, there was a
plan, to basically smuggle herout the country.
And the plan involved herturning up to work at a normal
time.
(28:38):
doing her work, leaving at abouteight o'clock.
She only packed summer clothes.
She only had the equivalent ofabout 40 pounds on her, but they
gave her, a diamond engagementring.
So if she did get into trouble,she could try bribing or sort of
pawning it for money orsomething.
And also, um, it would make herlook like she was married.
(28:59):
Yes.
She spent the night at Han'shouse and then went to a railway
station and met this personcalled Costa.
They made a public show ofpretending to have met by chance
and then travelled together to arailway station on the border
and then from that railwaystation they crossed the border.
(29:20):
without any incident.
This got her into theNetherlands.
This is so smart, by the way.
It's just, and I love the detailhow many people that took.
She must have lots ofinterpersonal skills to get all
these people on board.
she must have been able to sellherself.
And it's an internationaloperation.
(29:40):
Deception involving politiciansand border guards.
You listed so many people inthat one moment.
They all would have had to havespoken to her at some point or
had recognition of who she wasat some point.
Very impressive.
And this fellow, Costa,discovered, an element called
hafnium.
(30:01):
Uh huh.
And another physicist, Pauli,famous for the Pauli Exclusion
Principle, wrote a telegram toCosta and informed him he was
now as famous for the abductionof Lisa Meitner as he was for
the discovery of hafnium.
Oh my gosh, I love that.
a little later, Sweden, hadactually granted her permission
(30:22):
officially to enter Sweden onher Austrian passport.
So she wasn't spending much timein the Netherlands, that was
just to get her out of Germany.
And then she moved on to Sweden.
Meanwhile, another deception.
Han had told everyone at theKaiser Wilhelm Institute,
because they were asking, Oh.
Where's Lisa gone?
(30:42):
He said that she'd gone home toVienna to visit her relatives.
So while this was going on,while she was doing all of this
traveling, He was sort of doingthe deception back there.
He's kind of redeemed himself,hasn't he, Han?
He's had a bit of redemption.
She's not allowed any of herbelongings.
The Germans refused to send anyof her belongings out of the
country.
So she's She has just got twosuitcases of summer clothes and
(31:05):
40 bucks and a diamond ring.
And she's starting afresh thenin, in Sweden.
so the big thing.
We haven't done the big thing.
We haven't done the big thing.
So the big thing, Han is stillback in Germany.
And he's conducting someexperiments trying to find new
(31:27):
elements.
And he's taking some uranium,famously friendly uranium, and
bombarding it with, you know,neutrons and see what happens.
Is he okay?
Is he having a rough time?
What's going on with Han?
Has anyone spoken to Han lately?
(31:48):
Yeah.
So the way that Han's beenworking on, um, investigating
these nuclear processes islooking at the decay of
radioactive elements and seeingthat they start off heavy, they
decay, by decaying they losesome of their mass.
And something lighter comes out,and that lighter thing is
(32:08):
radioactive.
It loses some mass, it becomesanother, the next lighter
element or isotope, and down itgoes.
You eventually get to a pointwhere it's no longer
radioactive.
So it doesn't decay past acertain point.
Yeah, It's got nothing more tolose, it's stable.
It's stable, got it.
So he is, um, doing someexperiments where he's
(32:30):
bombarding these uranium nucleusnuclei with neutrons and seeing
what happens.
And he's thinking, oh, maybe Ican, because he's, he's on the
search for element 93.
Um, and he's thinking, you mightfind it.
That sounds like a children'sbook, the search for element 93.
It's like Catch 22, the sequel.
(32:54):
But he sees something odd inthat he bombards this uranium
with a neutron, and then he doessome chemistry tests on the
resulting atoms to find out whatit is, and he's left with
barium.
Now barium has got like 40percent of the mass of uranium,
so he's thinking this isn'tfitting with the model of
(33:15):
gradually stepping down in massthat we've seen before.
Something else, particularlystrange, is happening and they
don't know the means ofradioactive decay by which this
can happen.
It's going way further than itshould and it's happening way
more quickly than it should.
Normally you've got to wait forthe half life of each one that
(33:36):
you get to.
So the half life, it could beseconds, it could be days, and
you just sort of wait for it todecay and get lighter and then
you test it and see what you'releft with.
Um, but this is like 60 percentlighter.
He's baffled, So he wrote to,Lisa, with these results, and
was like, I don't know what thehell's happening here.
(33:57):
And she's quoted as sayingThat's nice that he reached out,
that's really cool.
So they're still in touch acrossall of this time.
Um, she Writes back to him sayat the moment the assumption of
such a thoroughgoing breakupseems very difficult to me The
nuclear physics we haveexperienced so many surprises
that one cannot unconditionallysay it is impossible Honey's
(34:18):
they're thinking.
I must have made a mistake.
My experiments gone wrong.
This result can't be right.
Mine is like She's open to it.
Yeah the thing that she isn'topen to and that she completely
dismisses is the Also Honda'smessed up She doesn't accept,
(34:40):
she's so confident in thequality of his work that she
doesn't think he's made an errorin the discovery of barium.
Oh come on, this is adorable.
Yes, yes, yes.
Of course it's not you, we allneed that person at work.
Of course it's not you.
So along with, uh, a familymember, I think nephew of hers,
(35:03):
who is, who also happens to be aphysicist.
As a thing, family business.
Family business, yeah.
They sit down and have a thinkof how it could be possible.
Um, basically in order for, ifHan hasn't messed up and what
he's done is split the atom.
(35:23):
Bloody hell.
And so they consider how thiscould be possible.
And how he's done it, and how inthe past they've never had
sufficient energy to chip awaymore than a tiny bit.
If you imagine a massiveboulder, they've just been there
with a little chisel on theoutside and they've taken off a
proton or an electron, just atiny tiny bit, and it's all
(35:46):
these lots of little chips.
But what he's done is thrown aping pong ball at a boulder.
And the thing is cracked inhalf.
Yep.
Yeah.
So they come up with this model,um, that they call the liquid
drop model of the nucleus.
Her family member, Frisch, soMeitner and Frisch, discussed
this while sat down on a treetrunk, having been on a walk in
(36:09):
the snow.
Yeah, this is where the bestthinking happens.
Yeah, right.
When you said earlier, like,they sat down to have a think, I
was like, I could totallypicture that.
Like, I could totally picturethat.
Well, we just need to thinkabout this, plonk.
Yeah, a nice little detail isthat when they were in the snow,
uh, Frisch had his skis on, uh,Lisa was insistent that she
(36:32):
would be just as fast as himwithout.
Nice.
And she was.
So she was on foot.
I love her.
I love her.
I love her.
Yeah.
so they did some calculations.
Just to see if it was plausiblethat this could possibly have
happened.
And they decided it waspossible, but they didn't know
(36:54):
where the energy was coming fromto drive them away.
Um, so this energy, there musthave been energy, and this
energy would have just appeared,and how can you create energy?
Well, you can't create energy,you can transform it, and the
transformation of that isEinstein's equation, E equals mc
squared, where energy is themass times the speed of light
(37:16):
squared, and they basically wentthrough, doing some more
calculations, and found thatTheoretically in this they would
lose enough mass which wouldgive the exact amount of energy
that they would need to repelThese two are parked at the
speed that they were seeing inthe experiment and leave them
(37:37):
with the barium that they wereexpecting.
So they, Meitner and Frisch, hadgone through and interpreted
Han's results in the correctway.
Rather than thinking, oh, hemust be wrong, they had come up
with the mechanism and proven itmathematically.
Meitner and Frisch come up withsome more experiments to, give a
(37:58):
bit more meat to their claims,and they publish a paper.
Hahn publishes his own paper,one part of it on 6th of
January, part on the 10th ofFebruary, 1939.
Frisch and Meitner publish theirpaper a day 11th of February.
And the scientific communitygoes crazy because this is the
(38:21):
first example, the discovery, ofwhat Meitner has termed, what
Lisa has termed, nuclearfission.
And nuclear fission, thissplitting apart of atoms, the
cascade effect of which you seein a nuclear bomb.
Yeah.
Releases colossal amounts ofenergy very, very quickly.
(38:42):
The controlled splitting ofwhich is what powers nuclear
reactors.
That's why you have fuel rodsand you have control rods that
absorb some of the things thatare split off so that they don't
then create a cascade reaction.
This is world changing.
Yeah, and it's this that thenfires off the further
(39:02):
investigation into, oh, that's alot of energy that's been
released.
We've just converted mass toenergy.
Maybe we can make a bomb out ofit.
Um, it's that.
Because that's your firstthought, obviously.
It's the first thought,obviously.
It's the first thing is like,how can I use this to destroy
things?
Yeah.
And now that nuclear fission isa concept, I recommend you watch
Oppenheimer, the movie, and thatwill tell you in much better
(39:23):
detail.
Um, the rest of the story givesus nuclear reactors, but Lisa
doesn't want anything to do.
She's absolutely horrified bythe idea.
that they would make a bomb outof this.
She's offered a place to workwith the British team on the
Manhattan Project, and she justtells them to do one.
Then 1945 the royal swedishacademy of sciences Announced
(39:48):
that Otto Hahn had been awardedthe Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
his discovery of the fission ofheavy atomic nuclei.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Otto, he's fallen off again.
Otto's going through quite thecharacter arc.
He did a thing.
He did a thing.
(40:09):
And was baffled by it.
She figured out exactly what hadhappened.
Yeah.
And told him where to look formore information and designed
the experiments that he thenwrote up in a paper and got the
Nobel Prize for.
Did he allude to, like, anybodyelse?
I don't think he mentioned herin his speech.
He basked.
Basked in his own glory.
(40:29):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Quite the villain in the end,Otto.
I first came across Lisa becauseI was looking for, female
scientists who should have got aNobel Prize.
Oh my god, I could just do awhole series on these.
It's devastating how often thishas happened, so look out for
season two.
Yeah.
in her career, Lisa wasnominated 49 times for Nobel
(40:54):
Prizes in physics and chemistry.
That's great.
Yeah, we don't know her name.
49 times.
49.
Gosh.
It's like a lifetime ofnominees, isn't it?
Yeah.
She's like the Beyonce ofchemistry.
She's the Beyonce, yeah.
but she, there was controversyat the time that she wasn't
(41:15):
mentioned.
Her fellow physicists weren'thappy.
Yeah, its of why, but it's justnot being a dick, isn't it?
It's like, yeah.
And then this is what a lot ofthese stories boil down to.
don't be a dickhead.
Yeah.
audio1484212765 (41:27):
Did she ever reference the fact that she
didn't get any recognition?
Did Lisa?
So I think she was quite upsetby that.
Well, upset by it all, really.
And like, throughout she wasgenerally upset.
And it's like you were sayingearlier, that her passion for
the work outweighed her, howmuch she begrudged the situation
(41:49):
that she was in and thetreatment that she got.
And it was just Another notentirely unexpected snub.
And they named element 109 as mynerium in her honor.
Yeah.
Yay! That's cool.
One of the elements that I guessOtto Hahn wishes he could have
discovered was then named afterher.
Yeah, he didn't tidy up thatone, did he?
(42:10):
No.
Serves you right, Otto.
I think hers is the only,Minerium is the only element
heavier than Uranium named aftera woman where the woman is not,
from fiction.
Wow, that's so depressing.
Because the other, like all theother ones are from mythology.
(42:33):
Oh, right.
Oh, Simon.
Well, that's a cool fact though.
You could whip that out at a pubquiz, couldn't you?
really sure what the conclusionis here.
The conclusion is just like,really depressing.
(42:53):
No, come on.
She achieved so much.
All those nominations.
And I think my conclusion fromit is that knowledge is power,
like, she positioned herselfduring the most turbulent time
of the 20th century in aposition where she was required
(43:14):
and needed and actually her, Herlegacy after that just proves
it.
it just sucks that she didn'tget an easier ride.
Imagine how, how much more shecould have achieved if she was
given the same ride as Alto oranybody else in that situation.
(43:34):
Yeah.
And.
Like if she didn't have to havea second job.
Well, she's got a crater on themoon named after her.
Has she?
Yeah.
Oh.
I wonder how she felt.
Oh.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, thanks.
It's a crater on Venus namedafter her.
An asteroid.
(43:55):
Why are these craters?
An institute in Berlin.
Element 109 that we've covered.
Yeah.
Um, there's a biannual LiseMeitner Prize for excellent
research in nuclear science.
Love that.
There's a Gothenburg LiseMeitner Award, that's awarded
annually to a scientist who'smade a breakthrough in physics.
(44:17):
Mm hmm.
building at the Free Universityof Berlin that was once the
Klaus Wilhelm Institute, and hadbeen known as the Otto Hahn
building since 1956.
That is a slap in the face.
It's a real slap, isn't it?
Was renamed to the Hahn Meitnerbuilding.
(44:37):
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So he stayed.
He stayed.
I thought he was replacedinitially.
But, he hasn't got a statue.
She's got a statue, um, in thegarden of Humboldt University in
Berlin, next to similar statuesof Hermann von Helmholtz and Max
Planck.
Yay! Planck's back for the end.
So their friendship endured.
(44:58):
Yeah.
Oh.
Oh, well, what a story.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Lisa might know all three and ahalf hours of her Well thanks
everyone, thanks for listening.
Oh yeah, thanks folks.
Thanks.
I'm Simon.
I'm Vicky, and this has been SheChanged History.
(45:18):
If you enjoyed it, please let usknow and let other people know.
through rating and subscribingand sharing.
If you want us to cover aparticular person, let us know
at shechangedhistoryatgmail.
com.
or if you just want to shoutabout how amazing the women in
your lives are, like don't feellike they have to be, famous
(45:42):
women or anything, just shout.
We'd love to hear your stories.
Definitely.
And I'm pretty sure we'll havean episode next week as well.
Yep.
So we'll see you.
Thanks everyone.
See you soon.
Thanks.
Bye.
Bye
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