Summary
Philip Ball reveals the dramatic tale of Lise Meitner, the humanitarian physicist of Jewish descent, who unlocked the science of the atom bomb after a terrifying escape from Hitler's Germany. One of the most brilliant nuclear scientists working in Germany her flight from terror cost Hitler’s regime dearly.
In the early 20th Century it was barely possible for women to work in science at all and yet Einstein once called Meitner Germany’s own Marie Curie. It was Meitner’s insight that began the nuclear age and her story remains ever relevant, as the threat of nuclear conflict lies once again over the world.
Philip Ball talks to historian Dr Patricia Fara about Lise Meitner and her research and to Patricia Lewis of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons or ICAN, based in Geneva, which this year was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for its work in trying to reverse nuclear proliferation, about Meitner’s legacy today.
Picture: Lise Meitner, Credit: Central Press/Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. Berlin, July 1938. A woman enters the railway station and shows her travel documents to Nazi |
| 0:51.8 | guards. She is small and slight and she seems |
| 0:55.3 | nervous. She boards the train where she greets another man and they travel together towards the Dutch border. |
| 1:06.2 | Are they lovers perhaps? |
| 1:08.7 | No, this is not a tryst, it's a rescue. The woman is an Austrian named Lisa Meitner, one of the most brilliant nuclear |
| 1:19.7 | scientists working in Germany. She is of Jewish descent and is fleeing Hitler's regime |
| 1:25.8 | when it is almost too late. The Nazi leaders have introduced a policy |
| 1:31.7 | prohibiting all scientists from leaving Germany. have |
| 1:35.0 | a policy prohibiting all scientists from leaving Germany, and they have forbidden Meitner a German passport |
| 1:38.0 | that would offer her freedom to travel. |
| 1:41.0 | At the Dutch border, a Nazi military patrol makes its way through the |
| 1:46.7 | train checking documents. |
| 1:49.7 | Myckner's traveling companion is a Danish chemist named Dirk Costa. |
| 1:54.7 | He's been helping German refugee scientists in the Netherlands and he's got permission from |
| 1:59.9 | the Dutch authorities for Meitner to enter the country. But all she has by way of papers |
| 2:06.4 | is her obsolete Austrian passport. |
... |
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