Meitners

Meitners is a surname of Germanic origin. The name is most closely associated with Lise Meitner, an Austrian-Swedish physicist whose work in the 20th century made a foundational contribution to the understanding of nuclear fission. As a family name, Meitners may be held by several individuals, though Lise Meitner is the most widely cited in scientific and historical contexts.

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) studied physics at the University of Vienna and conducted significant work in Berlin before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938 due to her Jewish heritage. In Stockholm, she continued her research and, together with Otto Frisch, provided the theoretical interpretation of nuclear fission following experimental observations by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938. Their 1939 work explained how a heavy nucleus can split into lighter nuclei, releasing a large amount of energy. Meitner’s role in interpreting and communicating the fission process is regarded as central to the discovery, though she did not receive the Nobel Prize for this work, a point often noted in discussions of the prize’s history.

The surname Meitner has also influenced scientific nomenclature; the synthetic chemical element meitnerium (Mt), with atomic number 109, was named in her honor in 1997 in recognition of her contributions to physics. Beyond Lise Meitner, the name may refer to other individuals who share the surname, though they are less prominently documented in public records.