Talking Shit with a Yank & a Brit - 36. Mega Discoverment

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

This week Gemma tells the story of Lise Meitner, a tale of atomic bombardment, sexism, missing out on Nobel Prizes and ultimately creating nuclear weapons...Send in your requests or stories to [e-mail] or on social media @TSYBPOD - Like, Rate & Follow!!!

Hi! It's Talking Shit with a Yank and a Brit. Do-do-do. Hello. Hi. I really tried to like be peppy to cover my tiredness and I think it came off as not confident. Not confident. Lacking in confidence. Need to be more assertive. I enjoyed it. I thought, yeah, I thought it was quite peppy. Thanks. Well. Pepparino.

Sometimes short and sweet and staccato. Like that's a music term, right? Staccato. Just really quick. Hello. Hey. Welcome to the podcast. This is our podcast. And if you're listening, that means you meant to tune in. So I don't think we need to say a lot about it. just by way of intro I'm Kate that's Gemma and we like to talk shit about stuff and things. Yeah we cover a variety of topics really um you know anything from we've we've covered many differences between the UK and the US. Hence the ink in a Brit. That was kind of the main focus of this. But we've kind of run out of those now.

Turns out we're very similar in a lot of ways. You know, men's women. Men's women's. Do that bit again. Women's issues. Men's women's. Do that bit again. Women's issues. Yeah. Men's issues. Men's women's issues.

Men's and women's issues. Menzies. And menzies. We've done music-based stuff. Yeah. Crazy law-based stuff. What's one of your favorite episodes i realize i've never asked you this oh good question putting you on the spot yeah i don't

know off the top of my head hold on as we both go to our podcast list to remind ourselves of our episodes I mean I enjoyed doing the Scientology episode with you which was our season finale yeah that was where we investigated inside L. Ron's Hubbard that was a good one

we got a couple guests mostly just friends and family yeah big fans of nepotism here on the pod oh yeah we love it um yeah we like to just talk shit about random topics. But most recently, we have been covering stories of inspirational women. And today I've got another story for you, Kate. Goody. Another story to make me feel like I haven't done enough in my life. And this one definitely will. Oh, great.

But we'll also make you possibly appreciate the time we're living in. Okay, cool. Lay it on me. Let's hear about this bitch. All right, so this lady is called Lise Meitner. Oh, her. No, I don't know anything about her. Okay.

I was like, oh, she knows. No. Though, quick question before we get started. Are you going to tell me something about her that I'm like, no shit, she's the one who did that? Maybe. Maybe. Oh, okay. Well, i'll stop trying to guess now i mean i'm gonna tell you what she did before i start the story because otherwise you'll just be like why am i listening to all this crap so just makes a while to get away to make it worth it sure so lee's i should say she was born elise so lease yeah lease lease mightna

um she was the co-discoverer of nuclear fission and was unfairly overlooked for the nobel prize the Nobel Prize in its discovery. That pisses me off. It happens so much. Damn it. It does. Which man was here while this happened? We'll give it to him. Basically, yeah. It's kind of like Margot Robbie being overlooked at the Oscars for Barbie. Not that I've seen Barbie yet.

I still haven't seen it. Oh, you haven't? No. No. I want to, but I'm waiting for it to come free on a streaming service. It's on HBO Max. Do you guys not have HBO Max? No. Do you want to borrow my login? Yes, please. My email is... I'll share it with you later. You can try logging in. Thanks.

So Lise Meitner was born elise meitner on the 7th of november 1878 in vienna austria to a jewish family oh so that would make her a virgo no scorpio a scorpio i think scorpio yeah I didn't look up the star sign. God damn it. Fuck's sake. I'm not going with the trend. Sorry, go on. Okay, she was the third of eight children.

Jesus. So only a few. And her father was a chess master called Philipp Meitner. And he was one of the first Jewish lawyers admitted to practice in Austria. The only information I can find on her mum was that she was called Hedwig, which is also the name of Harry Potter's owl, for you fellow Potterheads out there. Do you think that J.K. Rowling just is a big fan of Lise and her family and this is a shout out to her probably

yeah i guess there's hedwig in the angry itch too though so it's not like it's a totally abnormal name right no but she's probably a fan of nuclear fission i would have thought that's where my mind went obviously yeah who isn't um so you're telling me though that not only was lisa overlooked in like the nobel prize for nuclear fission but her mom we only literally the world only gets her first name yeah and having eight children yeah yeah that's what she did she's pumping children out why do we hate women so much? I know. So she was a clever little cookie. And her research began at age eight. And she was particularly interested in mathematics and science and kept a little notebook of her records under her pillow like a little cutie.

I wouldn't have been her friend. Me neither. I'd be like, are you doing mesh? You're a nerd. Okay. So she graduated from primary school in 1892, but in Vienna at the time, women were not allowed to attend college or secondary school until 1897

jeez okay so she didn't go to secondary school and the only career available to women at this time was teaching so she trained as a French teacher but in 1899 Meitner began taking private lessons with two other young women

and crammed in the missing eight years of secondary education into just two fucking years wait but at that point she could have gone to college yeah right i'm guessing maybe she was she felt too old too old yeah yeah i guess she would have had to go to secondary school first which would have been really annoying at that age, I think. So that makes sense. But with a load of boys as well. Yeah.

Holy fuck. Good for her. In July 1901, the girls who she had the private lessons with sat an external examination and only four out of the 14 girls passed, including our little niece. four out of the 14 girls passed, including our little niece. Following this, she attended the University of Vienna in 1901 and her doctorate was awarded to her on the 1st of February

1906. Dang. And she became the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna, after Olga Steindler, who had received her degree in 1903. No one talks about her either, I bet.

I know, poor Olga. Yeah. Now, while at the University of Vienna, Paul Ehrenfest, I think. That sounded flawless. Thank you. Asked her to investigate an article on optics by Lord Rayleigh that detailed an experiment that produced results that Rayleigh had been unable to explain.

She was not only able to explain what was going on, she went further and made predictions based on her explanation and then verified them experimentally, demonstrating her ability to carry out independent and unsupervised research okay so this guy i'm assuming it's a guy right lord yeah you said lord basically he's like i don't know i saw some shit i can't really talk about it published it people are like that is so interesting and she takes a look at it and she's like well obviously this is a reaction of the compound fluminium yep eating with the compound

butt stuff it's so obvious duh and and what the result was is like oh clearly you don't need to be supervised by a man. So carry on with your little research. Whilst engaged in that research, Meitner was introduced by Stefan Meyer to radioactivity, which was then a very new field of study. She started with alpha particles, and in her experiments with collimators and metal foil, she found that scattering in a beam of alpha particles

increased the atomic mass of metal atoms. Okay. I bet that just excited the shit out of her too. Are you following me? No. But yeah, yeah. Go on. Later on, this led Ernest Rutherford

to predict the nuclear atom. And she submitted her findings to the Physikalische Zeitkrieg on the 29th of June, 1907. I'm guessing that's a scientific paper. I don't know.

I didn't check. Or journal. Yeah. Yeah. Encouraged and financially backed by her father, she went to the Frederick Wilhelm University

where the renowned physicist Max Planck taught. Now, Planck invited her to his home, nothing dodgy, I don't think, and allowed her to attend his lectures, which was very unusual because he was actually on the record as opposing the admission of women to universities in general. But he was willing to admit that there was the occasional exception, and apparently he recognized Meitner as one of those exceptions.

Because she had a nice butt. Lucky her. I hope that it was genuinely because of her intelligence and expertise. Yeah, I think it was. If I were her, I'd be be like so what's the deal with you just generally don't think women should be admitted to university but i'm okay yeah i think genuinely was yeah that was the general consensus really but i think the more i learned about her she does seem like a bloody clever woman.

And I think they were just generally, like, blown away by the shit she was doing. She's got a brain like a man. Is she wearing pants? Because no, I'm not sure. Maybe she's just a feminine looking man. I don't know. Okay. a feminine looking man. I don't know. When she was not attending Planck's lectures, Meitner approached Heinrich Rubens, the head of Experimental Physics Institute,

sorry, the Experimental Physics Institute, about doing some research. Now, Rubens said he would be happy for her to work in his lab and also added that Otto Hahn was looking for a physicist to collaborate with at the Chemistry Institute. And a few minutes later, she was introduced to Hahn. Remember Hahn? I can't, I don't think I'll forget it. So Hahn had studied radioactive substances under Sir William Ramsey and in Montreal under Rutherford. He was already credited with the discovery of what were then thought to be several new radioactive elements. But in fact, they were isotopes of known elements. But the concept of an isotope, along with the term, was only compounded in 1913 by a guy called Fred.

So nice try, Han. God's so stupid. Okay, so Han was the same age as Meitner and she made note of his informal and approachable manner which was not very welcome

in those days, in this time, apparently the locals didn't like it very much, but because he'd been in Montreal, he was quite happy chappy. Okay. Hold on. Sorry. I know I keep interrupting, but like, so he was just a nice personable guy and people were like, what's wrong with him? Yeah, basically. Okay. nice personable guy and people were like what's wrong with him yeah basically okay

um so in montreal haunt had become accustomed to collaboration with physicists including at least one woman harriet brooks so he's worked with women before. Clearly a just very progressive man. Yeah, he's accustomed to that. So don't worry about it. Anyway, Mike Knott and Hannah started collaborating and the head of the

Chemistry Institute, Emile Fisher, gave Han the former woodworking shop in the basement to use as a lab and Han kitted it out with some electroscopes and stuff. But it was not possible to conduct research in the woodshop, however. So one of the heads in the chemistry department allowed Han to use a space in one of his two private laboratories upstairs in the actual Brill University. Not the basement.

Not the basement. Meitner, however, was only allowed to work in the basement, which had its own external exit and entrance, but she could not set foot in the rest of the institute, including Hahn's lab space upstairs. And if she wanted to go to the toilet, she had to use one at a restaurant down the street because they wouldn't allow her to use one in the institute. Like, what is she going to do if you use the toilet here? You might get your girl cooties on us.

Well, many scientists did not believe that women could do good scientific work and didn't respect her work or trust any of her results. scientific work and didn't respect her work or trust any of her results so don't you think they would have had a better time letting her do it and then being like you fucked all of this up because you're so dumb and like trying to prove her wrong yeah but that would make more sense to me yeah that's because the reality is is we're actually scared of your brain and doing better than us and you can have children you can do it all um her and han were also working unpaid during this time so doing shit loads of research not being paid for it relying on their father's money to financially support them i saw a note as well that said that han was getting a lot more money than she was from his father but you know that's maybe his

father had more money I don't know I suppose the implication is his father was far more supportive than her father of like pursuing this and so yeah maybe he was willing to give whatever but yes I agree but I agree it could just be well this is what I can

give a kid. Sorry. I got eight fucking children to look after. For fuck's sake. What more do you want? Your mom doesn't work. She's bedridden from the eight children she had to have. She's got the name of an owl.

What do you want her to do? Fly around at night? Catching mice? That's what we've been eating. She's working her butt off okay um however luckily the following year uh women were admitted to universities and she no longer had to waddle down the street holding her pee in until she got to a restaurant so she's networking she's you, she's working her way around. She can now wee indoors.

That's great. Still can't go to the lab, but at least she can use the bathroom. Yeah. So during the first years, Meitner worked together with Hahn, and they co-authored three papers in 1908 and six more in 1909. She also, together with Hahn, discovered and developed a physical separation method known as radioactive recoil,

in which a daughter nucleus is forcefully ejected from its matrix as it recoils at the moment of decay. I'm envisioning a cannon is involved, as you described that. Yeah. I mean, force as you described that. Yeah. I mean, forcefully ejective would. Yeah. Or slingshot, whatever.

Yeah, whatever. Use your imagination, I guess. Little atom-looking light guy. If there's any scientists out there that want to put this in layman's terms for us, that would be great. Sounds important, but I can't for the life of me guess why or how it is it's further shit that's all we need to know okay um while han was more concerned with discovering new elements now known to be isotopes might know was more concerned with understanding their radiations she observed that radioactive recoil could be the new way of detecting

radioactive substances. And they set up some tests and soon discovered two new more isotopes. Did they name them? This is Charlie and this is Katarina. Yeah, we believe they are the actual names

for them. I know some things. I know some things. I know some things. In 1912, Hahn and Meitner moved to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, the KWI, for chemistry. Hahn accepted an offer from Fisher to become a junior assistant in charge of its radiochemistry section, the first laboratory of its kind in Germany. The job title, the job came with the title of professor and a salary of 5,000 marks per year. Holy shit. Yeah. Bankroll. Money, money.

How much is that in today's, do you know? What? No, you didn't get that information. Millions. Two billion dollars a year. That was a lot of marks. Man, he made some marks. Meitner, on the other hand, worked

without a salary as a guest in Han's section I'm laughing because it's just so so fucked up just cheering you up so unsurprising nothing you've said is unsurprising

or surprising it's all unsurprising where was i so yeah she worked without salary as a guest she had to sign the guest book every day she came in uh later that year though perhaps fearing that was in financial difficulties and might return to vienna oh, by the way, this is all in Germany. Did I say that? It's in Berlin. I mean, the marks clued me in, but thank you for clarifying.

For those of you who don't know where marks were based. So yeah, later that year, fearing that Mike was in financial difficulties and might return to Vienna since her father had died in 1910, Planck appointed her as his assistant in the Institute for Theoretical Physics in the Friedrich Wilhelm University, where she basically marked his papers or his students' papers.

But it was her first paid position, although assistant was the lowest rung on the academic ladder but she was the first female scientific assistant in now this is spelt prussia i've never heard of that yeah prussia is just like a region that i don't think we use that term anymore to define it but if i recall correctly and i know i don't it was like that area thank god you're here i know things like oh this is when things start picking up for her, right? Okay. So proud officials presented Meitner to Kaiser Wilhelm II himself

at the official opening of KWI for chemistry on the 23rd of October 1912. I think they were like, we've got a woman. We're going to show you her. Do you think he cared? Or was he like, can she dance? Dance for the men. And if they don't dance, then they're no friend of mine. Hey, that's exactly how that whole thing went, actually.

That's what we get for doing this on a tuesday evening and afternoon okay so they paraded her out in front of the kaiser willhelm the whatever and he's like cool you nerds get to work i spent a lot of money on this find me some fucking shit, yeah? But it did work in her favour because the following year she became an associate or a mid-glide which was the same rank as Han. Although her salary was still less.

We'll have a look at that. How? Why? I don't know. Because she's got lady bits. Yeah. What is she going to do with all that money? She's going to have makeup. The radioactive section became the Han-Maita Laboratory. So cheers, making moves, baby.

So Han and Maita salaries would soon be dwarfed by the royalties from mesothorium, in brackets, middle thorium, radium-228, also called German radium. I don't understand. They got royalties? So I think they, yeah, they got royalties because I think they found this German radium or discovered it. How is that different than other radium? Is it got an accent? Is it fat? Or is that the American radium? Tell me more. I don't know, Kate.

I didn't know you were going to ask these many questions. Sorry. But basically they produced it for medical purposes. So that's why they got a shit ton of royalties. But for them, they're finally getting paid for their work. Nice. Well, Han received 66,000 marks in 1914. And he gave 10% of the royalties to mitre which i guess is generous

and here this whole time i was like waiting for you to be like and he was so good to her and they fell in love and got married but he just basically climbed all over her he did talk very um highly of her didn't put his money where his mouth is but yeah he was also a bit like but you were in the basement for the majority of yeah he's a bit like that grading papers that sort of thing dancing for the kaiser exactly um but around this time Armitna received an attractive offer of an academic position in Prague but Planky the other guy who I mentioned

earlier didn't want Maita to leave so he told Fischer the other guy I mentioned earlier and Fischer basically arranged for her salary to be doubled to 3 000 marks that'll keep her around he really liked how she would write like a plus on the paper and i think by this point she is actually she's now doing research yeah so well done no she's still she's still grading us papers too

you know it i know it planky just you do it better in july 1914 just before the outbreak of world war one han was called to active duty and meitner undertook x-ray technician training and a course on autonomy at the city hospital in Leicesterfield. Was that to help serve or was that to take over for him? Yes. So she did that to obviously help with the war, which I'll go into a bit more detail about. But while she did that,

she also completed both the work on the beta ray spectrum that she had begun before the war with Hahn and another guy called Bayer, and her own study of the uranium decay chain. So she's just fucking doing everything. And in July 1915, when she returned to Vienna, where she joined the Austrian army as an x-ray nurse technician, and her unit was soon deployed to the Eastern Front in Poland and she also served on the Italian Front for a while before being discharged in September

1916. Jeez. So she's sciencing, she's nursing, she's arming. That's fine. I'll do it all. Just to get on my side hustle so I can get enough money.

Yeah. So following her discharge-ment. Dischargement? Release. I don't know. I think it is just discharge, right? Following her discharge. Ew. Oh, no. That's really wrong, isn't it?

It is. For some reason, when I said it, it was fine. Must be the accent. Following her discharge from the army, mightn't return to the KWI to continue her research in October. In January 1917, she was appointed the head of her own physics section. Yes, bitch. We made it.

Mm-hmm. Good job, gal. And the Hahn-Meiter laboratory was divided into separate Hahn and Meiter laboratories and her pay was increased to 4000 marks

I just want to say to the people at home the gesticulations Gemma is doing is it's quite interpretive. Like a lot of, I don't know, it's beautiful though. Thank you. I find it helps me read.

Oh, okay. But basically our gal made it. She's no longer a second name. Yeah, name first on the wall. So she was the first professor of physics in germany first woman professor of physics in germany um and the first like head of a lab yeah not the first first woman sorry's late here and my brain's not really working. A lot of words on this page.

I'm starting to decline a little bit. Why didn't I choose the Monopoly lady for first week? For a shout-out for next time, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Right. Just had a pay rise. Now, between 1917 and 1938, loads of other really complicated research happened and was conducted, which I won't go into because I'll be honest with you, it was a lot of words I didn't understand. But trust me, it was very science-y. And important work that they did.

And it was, you know, it was great. And Meitner continued her work alongside chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Now, after the neutron was discovered in 1932 scientists realized that it would make a good probe of the atomic nucleus oh yeah okay okay so take it to dinner first though just like okay get consent. Fine. Stop probing my atomic nucleus. So this thing that they created is now being discovered, is being repurposed to investigate nuclei, pretty much.

Yes. Got it. Easy. You're so good at this. I'm a physicist. Oh, I didn't know. No, just now, from listening to you. Okay, I'm teaching you so much.

Yeah. I feel like I just come across as really stupid when I do these reports. Last one, I couldn't pronounce any words. This one, I've got no idea what I'm fucking talking about. I actually got a lot of feedback about how beloved your pronunciations were from Queen Theodora's episode. Yes. And I think that part of our charm is you know, not being know-it-alls about everything. We're very

approachable and down-to-earth, even though that is something that's very unusual these days. I am certainly not a know-it-all. I think you're doing great. I know about every fourth word, but I'm with you. Just stay with me.

We're getting to the point. We're getting there eventually. Okay. In 1934, Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than... Why are you laughing? Is that... First of all, just like how you're talking but also is that the scientific term bombarded this is in science papers okay okay it's fun it sounds funny to me

but i you know what again not an expert so Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than uranium. Ah! Exciting! What he thought, though. Was he right? Most scientists thought that hitting a large nucleus like uranium with a neutron could only induce small changes in the number of neutrons or protons. However, one chemist, Ida Nordak, pointed out that Fermi hadn't ruled out the possibility that in his reactions the uranium might actually have broken up into lighter elements.

Though she didn't propose any theoretical basis for how that could have happened, and her paper was largely ignored, and no one, not even Nodak herself, followed up on the idea. Oh yeah, she got shunned. She doesn't give a shit. Came up with an idea and was like, eh, on to the next.

Yep. But, following Fermi's work, Meitner and Hahn, along with the chemist Fritz Strassmann, also began bombarding uranium and other elements with neutrons and identifying the series of decay products. I don't know what any of that means, but sounds clever. In my head, they're just throwing shit. Yeah, they're just throwing shit. At tiny little neutrons. Or in my head, it's a little bit bigger and they're just like throwing shit like hats and i know it's probably in a like a little contained thing with a microscope and a little device and

they're all wearing goggles and stuff but not in my head that's not what they're doing so while they're doing that Hahn carried out the careful chemical analysis and Meitner the physicist explained the nuclear processes involved now Meitner who obviously had Jewish ancestry worked at the KWI she actually renounced Judaism when she was quite young and converted to Christianity. But obviously, the Nazis didn't care about that. So she worked at the KWI until 1938, July 1938, when she was forced to flee from the bloody Nazis. It didn't even occur to me that that would be coming,

despite all of the clues you gave me about the time frame and this person. So that's sad. I didn't know it was going to turn into that. Yeah, it sucks sucks to be honest yeah because her research really was her whole life like she never got married she never had kids she devoted everything to her research because she was bloody good at it um and she tried to hang on to her position as long as possible, but when it came clear that she would be in danger, she left hastily with just two small suitcases.

She took a position in Stockholm at the Nobel Institute for Physics, but she had few resources for her research there felt unwelcome and isolated but she did keep up her correspondence with Hahn and continued to advise him about their joint research try throwing a potato at it next time love please that was one of their letters okay so Hahn and Strassman at the Heiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin I don't know why I've included all that information we already know that this is why I never got good marks doing essays at school size at school oh god because you just like didn't introduce a topic and leave it up there you continually like just waffling absolute waffle i like it i was i was still at least in

stockholm so you reminded me i'm bringing you back to Berlin now. I'm painting a picture. That's what I'm doing. Nazi Germans. So Hahn and Strassmann, back in Berlin, were still bombarding uranium with slow neutrons and discovered that barium had been produced. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Would you believe it? had been produced. Oh my god. Oh my god. Would you believe it? Hahn suggested a bursting of the nucleus but he was unsure of what physical basis for the results were. Again, I don't know

what that sentence means but okay. Peter. It was words I knew. I knew all of the words individually. But I still don't know what it means altogether. Nope, not in that context. They're bombarding. They've made barium.

Bursting. Sure. Suggesting bursting of the nucleus. So they didn't know what the physical basis was for. So they reported their findings by mail to Meitner in Sweden, who a few months earlier had fled Nazi Germany. Again, I'm repeating myself, I'm sorry. This must have been stuff that you've moved.

Copy and pasting is all I've done. No, I get it. I do that too. So Meitner and her nephew Frisch, Frisch, Frisch? Frisch. That was what That was.

Frisch. That was what it. Oh, his parents hated him. F-R-I-S-C-H. Yeah. Frisch. Okay. So, yeah, she's working with her nephew now.

She's got him as like a little assistant. Oh. So they together theorized then proved that uranium nucleus had been split and published their findings in nature which again i think was a scientific paper or journal yeah so meitner calculated that the energy released by each disintegration was approximately 200 mega electron volts, which doesn't sound like a real thing, but it is, according to this. It sounds like a lot of a made-up thing.

Yeah, it does. By analogy with the division of biological cells, they named the process fission. Or fission. I don't know how you say it. This principle led to the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II. And subsequently, other nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.

So... Oh, great. Not all great. No, that's horrible. No. So, she's basically helped discovered fission. Nuclear fission. Unfortunately, it did lead to atomic bombs and nuclear weapons.

But we'll overlook that. It's a mega discoverment, discovery. Discoverment. That wasn't her intention, that discoverment. That discoverment. No, she didn't mean to create atomic bombs. That wasn't her intentionment. Oh, God.

Right. You're crashing a jammer. I'm nearly there. Amemma i'm nearly there am i i'm nearly there all right i feel like something horrible is gonna happen in this story not really oh good okay phew i mean not any worse than the other crap that's happened to her um fair despite many on the sorry let me start again despite the many honors that meitner received in her lifetime she did not receive the nobel prize but it was instead awarded solely to otto hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission do you think he even thanked her in his speech i don't know i mean she was nominated 49 times for physics and chemistry noble prizes nobel prizes but never won so she at least got

acknowledged i guess in that way it's an honor just to be Yeah. She's kind of like the Leonardo DiCaprio of the science world. Yeah, or always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Yeah, exactly. On the 15th of November, 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Hahn had been awarded

the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei. However, Meitner was the one who told Hahn and Strassman to test their radium in more detail, and it was she who told Hahn that it was possible for the nucleus of uranium to disintegrate. Without these contributions from right now, Hahn would not have found the uranium nucleus can split in half.

So she played a big old part. We don't know. Maybe he would have. Maybe he would, yeah. You're all right. It sounds useless, to be honest. Because he was like, I don't know, bursting, but I can't really come up with a reason why.

So I doubt it. But at the time, Mike know herself wrote in a letter, Surely Han fully deserved the Nobel Prize for chemistry. There is really no doubt about it, but I believe that Frisch and I contributed something not insignificant to the clarification of the process of uranium fission.

How it originates and that it produces so much energy that that was something very remote to harm that was kind of gracious of her yeah kind of gracious but i feel like a kind of backhanded compliment as well which i quite like i mean the thing is is it's like he deserved it but i did too we both could have gotten it because we discovered this together it's not like it has to go to one person i can go to multiple people for the same thing they've just fucking overlooked me thanks yeah uh this is a little bit dark um so after the boring after the bombing of Hiroshima, Meitner found that she had become somewhat of a celebrity. She had a radio interview with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Roosevelt. Roosevelt? Well, I think people say it both ways. I say Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yeah. Eleanor Roosevelt. And a few days later,

another one with a radio station in New York, during which she heard her sister Frieda's voice for the first time in years, because they all got separated because of the war. Whilst in America, she visited a Catholic university of America, the Catholic university of America, where she met and discussed physics with Albert Einstein

and several other scientists I've never heard of. I know him. Yeah, I know him too. And Albert also once called her the German Marie Curie. So he was a big fan. Yeah.

But unfortunately, you know, all good things must come to an end. She had really good life like there were she did loads of shit traveling all over the place and meeting loads of people after all this and great time but after a strenuous trip to the united states in 1964 sorry she had a heart attack from which she spent several months recovering and her physical and mental conditions weakened by the oh fuck you know by the atherosclerosis nailed it yeah after breaking her hip in a fall and suffering suffering several small strokes in 1967 mightn't have made a partial recovery, but eventually was weakened to the point

where she moved into a Cambridge nursing home. At this point, she's living in England, by the way. Forgot to mention that. And Meitner died in her sleep on the 27th of October, 1968, at the age of 89. Damn. As was her wish, she was buried in the village of Brambley in Hampshire at St. James's

Parish Church, close to her younger brother, Walter, who had died in 1964. Her nephew, Frisch, composed the inscription on her headstone, and it reads, Lise Meitner, a physicist who never lost her humanity. Aww. And that is the story of Lise Meitner, a physicist who never lost her humanity. Aww. And that is the story of Lise Meitner, the overlooked physician who helped discover fission. Physician? Physician and fission.

Sorry. I just am choked up a little bit because on one hand, it's like a tale as old as time, right? We know part of the reason I think we wanted to do this was talk about women who've done some great things that maybe got overlooked by society because they were women, but also she did get some recognition. Like she, it sounds like she eventually, though far later than it should have been, got some recognition and respect in her field. And I mean, like I said, she got nominated, which isn't a small feat, but really it's pretty fucked up. 49 times as well. Yeah.

At some point she's going to be like, are you guys going to give me one? Or is this just like you said, Leonardo DiCaprio Fucking about now, come on I should probably cite some of my resources Obviously Wikipedia.org Which I think is just sort of A science-based website that gives you

Information on Scientific discoveries I do think it's a science journal Yeah that gives you information on scientific discoveries from what I can work out. Yeah, I do think it's a science journal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's also aps.org, aip.org, Britannica. And that was pretty much it. And Google.

Google played a big part in me finding those. Thank God for Google. Yeah. Well well good one I liked her thanks it was a mouthful wasn't it what led you to talking about her I saved a post a while ago of women that have been overlooked

and quashed by men for their discoveries and she was one of them well thank you for telling me about her now i know so much more about well no i probably my level of understanding and knowledge about like nuclear fission and science is probably about the same but if there was a trivia question that said who was the overlooked woman who discovered nuclear fission i would get it right exactly so yeah any science nerds out there who want to explain to us like we're five literally anything that jemma said

that we you know were vulnerable enough to acknowledge that we were not totally sure. I genuinely nearly Googled, like, nuclear fission for dummies. Do you think such a website exists? I don't know. I will just say, because I felt so dumb that I didn't know this or was kind of scrambling, Prussia was a German state located on the most North European plain and it formed the German

Empire when it united the German states in 1871 and Frederick Wilhelm III was the king of Prussia. There we have it. Who's Wilhelms? Wilhelm. Okay, so nuclear fission for dummies.

Fission occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom. So that was all the bombarding that we were talking about. Forcing it to excite and split into smaller atoms. It's a kink? Yeah. It's a kink of these atoms sounds like they split into two so it's basically splitting an atom into two which is known as fission products additional neutrons are also released that can initiate a chain reaction when each atom splits a tremendous amount of energy is released.

And you can harness it into a bomb, which can fuck up a lot of things. Which we all love. We discover something and we're like, how can we make this a weapon? Yeah. That's all we're thinking every day, all day. How can I make this into a web how can i weaponize this if you're not thinking that you're not human so no get on get on our level i guess yeah get with the times motherfuckers well good job you. I thought you were brilliant. Oh, thank you, Catherine. I appreciate it.

I think I'm going to learn how to write essays for my next report. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't change a thing. So, dear listeners, Gemma and I need to go to sleep now because that was tiring for us both. My brain hurts and she's tired because it's like 1am there oh okay it's more like 11pm but whatever

we're old it's a school night you can't talk okay Gemma go ahead Gemma Gemma Gemma Gemma Gemma Gemma I don't remember what the rule is for that game yeah thank you for tuning in thank you for listening

as always oh I'm very sorry as always do get in touch and you know send in your crap to us at um talk shit with with us to us talk shit to us at gmail that's it talk shit to us at gmail.com um uh we're also on social media at tsypod. If you want to give us a follow. Also, if you're listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you're not already following us, then just give us a little follow click

because it helps other people find the podcast. Like a great review. Yeah, all that shit. Because it helps other people find the podcast. Like, great review. Yeah, all that shit. That would also be lovely. And with that, let's go the fuck to bed. Yay! It's good to see you, G. And you.

Take care. Bye! Bye! Thank you. Oh, I want actually really want you to keep that one in. you