Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics - Couverture rigide

Sime, Ruth Lewin

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0520089065 ISBN 13 : 9780520089068

Editeur : University of California Press, 1996

Synopsis

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was a pioneer of nuclear physics and codiscoverer, with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, of nuclear fission. Of Jewish origin, she fled Nazi Germany for Stockholm in 1938 and later moved to Cambridge, England. Ruth Sime's absorbing book is the definitive biography of Lise Meitner, the story of a brilliant woman whose extra-ordinary life illustrates not only the dramatic scientific progress but also the injustice and destruction that have marked the twentieth century. A shy girl, Meitner grew up to be a renowned scientist. Braving the sexism of the scientific world, she joined the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and became a prominent member of the international physics community. Her career was shattered when she fled Germany, and her scientific reputation was damaged when Hahn took full credit - and the 1944 Nobel Prize - for the work they had done together on nuclear fission. Sime uses primary archival material, much of it unpublished, to show Meitner's interaction with her illustrious contemporaries, including Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Fermi, van Laue, and Franck. In Meitner's letters and personal papers we hear her speak for herself about science, the rise of Nazism, Holocaust atrocities, and the postwar nuclear age. She refused to work on the Allied atomic bomb and was greatly concerned about nuclear weapons after the war. When Lise Meitner died in England at the age of ninety she was a solitary figure, betrayed by her friend and collaborator Hahn, but still passionate about physics. In the year following the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the story of this remarkable woman has particular resonance.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Ruth Lewin Sime is an American author, educator and scientific researcher, best known for publishing works on history of science. She co-wrote and narrated a BBC-TV program on Lise Meitner, A Gift From Heaven, which was named one of the best science programs of the year by The Royal Society in 1992.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Date d'édition: 1996
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0520089065
• ISBN 13: 9780520089068
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 540
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible