Lise Meitner

Meitner, Lise (1878–1968), Austrian physicist who worked with Otto Hahn to discover protactinium (1917). Following the experiments of German physical chemists Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in bombarding uranium with neutrons, Meitner and her nephew, Otto Robert Frish (1904– ), correctly interpreted the results as showing nuclear fission and predicted the chain reaction. This work contributed to the development of the atomic bomb and other uses of nuclear energy.

See also: Nuclear energy; Physics.