Lise Meitner was a physicist born in Austria-Hungary, but gained Swedish citizenship in 1949. She is responsible for the discovery of protactinium and nuclear fission. Protactinium is a radioactive chemical element (Pa). It reacts with oxygen, water vapor, and inorganic acids.
She discovered protactinium in 1917 while at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin. Meitner and her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, discovered nuclear fission in 1938.
She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 19 times between 1924 and 1948, and the Nobel Prize for Physics 30 times between 1937 and 1967. In 1944, her collaborator Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission. Many scientists called her exclusion unjust.
Chemical element 109 meitnerium was named for her in 1997.
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