Reference
- Goeppert-Mayer, Maria (1906-1972)German-born US physicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for discovering the shell model of nuclear structure.
Maria Goeppert was born on 28 June 1906 in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia (now Katowice in Poland). When Maria was four years old her father was appointed professor of paediatrics at the University of Göttingen and the family moved there. High inflation rates in Germany in the 1920s meant that the only school capable of preparing girls for the abitur exam was closed, so Maria's education had to be continued in private. She passed the exam in Hanover in 1924. Maria Goeppert entered Göttingen University as a mathematics student but was excited by quantum mechanics - Max Born was on the staff in Göttingen - and quickly changed to physics. She obtained her doctorate in theoretical physics in 1930 and married Joseph Edward Mayer, a US physicist working in Göttingen with James Franck. The couple moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, where Maria worked on chemical physics and the colour of organic molecules, and to Columbia University in 1939, where she worked on isotope separation. In 1946 Maria was appointed a professor in the physics department at Chicago and given a post at the nearby Argonne National Laboratory. Such an appointment came as a relief as Maria had not been paid at Johns Hopkins and felt she had been kept on the sidelines at Columbia...
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Perspectives
The Madame Curie Complex
Why are the fields of science and technology still considered to be the preserve of men? This work moves beyond the common explanations to give historical context and unexpected revelations about women's contributions to the sciences. Exploring the lives of Jane Goodall, Rosalind Franklin and the women of the Manhattan Project among many others, Des Jardins considers their personal stories in relation to their male counterparts to demonstrate how the gendered culture of science molds the methods and experience of the work.
Online Resources
- From Natural History to the Nuclear Shell Model: Chemical Thinking in the Work of Mayer, Haxel, Jensen, and SuessIn 1949 the nuclear shell model was discovered simultaneously in the United States and Germany. Both discoveries were the result of a nuclear scientist looking at geochemical and nuclear data with the eyes of a chemist. Maria Goeppert Mayer in the United States and Hans Suess in Germany both brought a chemist’s perspective to the problem; the theoretical solution was subsequently supplied independently by Mayer and Hans Jensen.
- Maria Goeppert MayerThis is a brief biography of Maria Goeppert Mayer. We have tried to emphasise that even outstanding women like her had to suffer (and still suffer) great discrimination. In spite of the handicaps she achieved the highest scientific distinction.
- Mayer-Jensen shell model and magic numbers: An independent nucleon model with spin-orbit couplingMany nuclear models have been put forward since 1932. Among them the collective model proposed by Aage Niels Bohr and Ben Roy Mottelson and the nuclear shell model proposed by Maria Goeppert Mayer and Johannes Hans D Jensen are the two most successful models. A number of experimental facts like the existence of magic numbers compiled by Maria Mayer led to the discovery of the nuclear shell model. The addition of a nuclear spin-orbit coupling force to the mean field of the nucleons successfully predicted the nuclear magic numbers and many other properties of nuclei.
Maria Goeppert Mayer: Women who changed science
- Maria Goeppert Mayer: Women who changed scienceFor most of her career, Maria Goeppert Mayer worked “just for the fun of doing physics,” without pay or status or a tenured position. She was 58 before she became a full professor. And yet she made major contributions to the growing understanding of nuclear physics, including the revelatory nuclear shell model.
Websites
- Maria Goeppert Mayer Biographical-Nobel PrizeMaria Goeppert Mayer was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, then Germany, the only child of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria, nee Wolff. On her father’s side, she is the seventh straight generation of university professors.
In 1910 her father went as Professor of Pediatrics to Göttingen where she spent most of her life until marriage. She went to private and public schools in Göttingen and had the great fortune to have very good teachers. It somehow was never discussed, but taken for granted by her parents as well as by herself that she would go to the University. Yet, at that time it was not trivially easy for a woman to do so. In Göttingen there was only a privately endowed school which prepared girls for the “abitur”, the entrance examination for the university. This school closed its doors during the inflation, but the teachers continued to give instructions to the pupils. Maria Goeppert finally took the abitur examination in Hannover, in 1924, being examined by teachers she had never seen in her life. - Maria Goeppert-Mayer-Atomic Heritage FoundationGoeppert Mayer, whose father was a professor, understood the importance of education. She gained entry to Gottingen University, which was significant for a woman at that time. She originally planned to study mathematics but quickly switched to physics. Top physicists at the university recognized her talent. After completing her Ph.D. thesis and marrying her husband, Joseph Mayer, in 1930, the couple moved to America.
- Maria Goeppert-Mayer-National Women's Hall of FameMaria Goeppert-Mayer silently fought the injustices of the male-dominated field of science while at the same time tackled the mysteries of physics. The first American woman and the second woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Mayer made extensive contributions to several different technical fields in physics.