Atomic Women

by Roseanne Montillo

  It was another professor, Franz Exner, who incited Lise’s eagerness to take exams for her doctorate. She could be the second woman to earn a PhD in physics from the University of Vienna, he told her one day.

  She turned in her dissertation on November 20, 1905, and prepared to wait. Days passed and she heard nothing. She didn’t even bump into Professor Exner in the hallways, as she usually did several times a day, in order to gauge his demeanor for a clue as to whether or not she had done well. Paranoia took over, and she became convinced that he was avoiding her so that he wouldn’t have to share the terrible news. She resigned herself to the fact that she had failed. Then, on the morning of November 28, she saw Exner rushing toward her with the news that her thesis had been approved. She would now have to sit for two sets of orals, one on December 19 and a more detailed exam to defend her work on December 23. Finally, in February 1906 she was officially awarded her degree. It was an extremely proud moment for Lise and her family.

  But her happiness was later marred by a news report she happened to read: Pierre Curie had been run over and killed by a horse-drawn wagon. The newspapers called it a “senseless tragedy.”

  Although she now held a doctorate, she began work in Professor Boltzmann’s laboratory at the university as one of his assistants, alongside another assistant named Stefan Meyer. It was not a terrific job for someone with her qualifications, but it was a first step toward the career she desired, and she enjoyed the work. At the same time, she was also getting her teaching certificate, which was something her father wanted her to do, as there was safety as well as status in a teaching job. But the more she thought about teaching, the more she realized that what she really wanted was to be a scientist and to make a life and a living out of it.

  When her first article on radiation was published, she was eager to show it to Professor Boltzmann, and she rushed to his classroom, expecting to find him as she always did, sitting behind his desk. Instead she found only Stefan Meyer, his eyes red and puffy from crying. The professor wasn’t there, he told her through mumbled whispers. Exhausted by a recent illness, the professor had requested time to travel to the Italian seaside town of Trieste, where he was to decompress and recharge. He had planned on returning the day before. But something must have happened. Meyer held out a newspaper for her to see. She took it from him and read the news: Professor Boltzmann had killed himself while in Trieste. He must have been overcome by one of his fits of desperation, Meyer said, and gone there in the hope of feeling better.

  Lise had a difficult time dealing with the professor’s death. He was a strong and intelligent man whom she had admired, and the laboratory was a somber place without him. His presence was everywhere, and his death cast a shadow over the entire staff.

  The next spring, a visitor came by the institute. Max Planck—the same professor Lise would seek out after learning that she had not been accepted in Marie Curie’s laboratory—was the chair of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. After Professor Boltzmann’s death, Planck received a letter offering him the position at the laboratory.

  He decided to visit the lab, eager to talk about the job with Stefan Meyer, who was temporarily in charge, and to tour the facilities. Afterward, he directed his attention to Lise, extending his hand toward her and telling her that he was very happy to shake the hand of a “lady doctor.” Like the rest of the staff, Planck was saddened by the death of Professor Boltzmann, a man who had been a huge influence on his life and especially on his work in quantum theory.

  Lise was surprised. She had known Professor Boltzmann for many years, and he had never mentioned Dr. Planck to her. She ventured to tell him of the work she was doing and the paper that would be published in the summer, along with the ones she hoped to publish in the years to come. Professor Boltzmann had been a great influence on her life, too, she told Dr. Planck. Talking to Dr. Planck helped Lise on two levels: It helped her to understand new theories on physics, and it helped ease her mind away from Professor Boltzmann’s suicide.

  As it turned out, Dr. Planck did not take the job at the institute but returned to his position at the University of Berlin. Lise soon began to think that there was no future for her beyond the laboratory. She knew that she needed to learn more about the new theories in physics, and the only way to do that was to leave Vienna and study abroad.

  She made the decision to leave Vienna at the age of twenty-nine. She told her parents that she intended to stay in Berlin about three months, maybe six if she found that she had a lot to learn. But she lived there for more than thirty years.

  chapter three

  A Life in Learning

  Just as Lise Meitner had, Elizabeth Rona headed to Berlin. She was going to work for Otto Hahn, the director of the Radioactivity Department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. For the past fourteen years, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner had been working closely together, expanding the world’s knowledge of radioactivity. Elizabeth arrived to find a smooth-running department equipped with the latest instruments. The community that surrounded the institute seemed entirely focused on science, something she liked, even if not all the pursuits were geared toward radioactivity.

  At the institute, Elizabeth came to know not only Otto very well but also Lise. She knew that Lise was originally from Vienna, having made her way to Berlin to study under Max Planck and be assigned to work as a theoretical physicist with Otto Hahn.

  Elizabeth Rona was immediately fascinated by the experiments Lise Meitner was conducting at the time on beta decay. Lise believed that beta particles, in the same way as alpha particles, must form an energy field.

  Elizabeth liked Lise immediately, even though she found it hard to get to know her. Lise was quiet and shy, more of an introvert than Elizabeth had ever been. It took some time to crack that hard reserve. They were both outsiders who shared a devotion to science, and their work brought them together. Elizabeth came to admire Lise’s tenacity in solving scientific challenges; she was like a dog with a bone, one she never intended to give up.

  Lise told Elizabeth that she had always suffered from horrible stage fright. This did not surprise Elizabeth. Lise admitted that she dreaded the start of any lecture she gave; in fact, she tried to avoid giving lectures altogether. But no one saw a trace of fear on Lise’s face when she gave a talk. Elizabeth attended several of Lise’s lectures at the institute, and found Lise to be an engaging and eloquent speaker. Elizabeth told her as much, something that Lise appreciated.

  Despite her friendships with Lise and several others outside the laboratory, Elizabeth found life in Germany as harsh as it had been back home in Hungary. There was also a particular dislike for women, especially those involved in the sciences. As in Lise Meitner’s Austria, women were supposed to live by the motto “kitchen, children, church.”

  Elizabeth had rented a room in the home of a German couple, both of whom held PhDs in zoology. She thought their mutual backgrounds in the sciences would make for a pleasant interaction. However, it turned out that she was wrong. Despite his wife’s credentials, the husband would not allow his spouse to work outside the home, keeping her a virtual maid. And every time he bumped into Elizabeth heading to or returning from the institute, he would glare at her with disdain.

  Lise understood what Elizabeth was going through. She had experienced the same situation at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, and she hoped life would change for the better for every female scientist.

  Elizabeth Rona found that she and Lise Meitner had much in common, including the way each had come to study science and the influence their fathers had on them.

  It was the early 1900s, and Elizabeth Rona’s family was spending the summer holiday in their house just outside Budapest. As she looked out her bedroom window early in the morning, the birds were singing, the grass was green, and the sun was low on the horizon.

  There, sitting beneath a tree, was her father, surrounded by folders, books, and all kinds of correspondence. He was deeply involv
ed in his work, and even when she knocked on her bedroom window to catch his attention, he didn’t flinch. She wondered what had him so engaged. Still wearing her pajamas, she went outside. “What can be so interesting that it makes it worthwhile to get up at the crack of dawn?” she asked. He looked up and replied, “Research.”

  From that day forward, the word research took on a mythic significance—an importance she could not explain. She made up her mind that she would also have to find something to research, something that would nudge her awake at dawn with the same eagerness as her father.

  Samuel Rona, who was then a well-known dermatologist in Hungary, was happy that his young daughter had developed an interest in the sciences. On her first day of the school year, he brought her to the Holy Shepherd’s Hospital in Budapest, where he showed her an X-ray machine, explaining its intricate design and how it worked. Other children later talked of walking to the local pastry shop to commemorate that special first day with fancy pastries and cocoa. Instead, Elizabeth received a scientific lesson on the merits of the X-ray machine and was allowed to have her way with its buttons.

  A few days later, Dr. Rona came home in the evening in a very fine humor. He put his briefcase and papers on a nearby table and, without removing his jacket, called Elizabeth to come sit by him, as he had a special surprise for her. With much ceremony, he showed her a small tube that he had been hiding in his pocket. “Radium,” he told her. “And someday it will cure skin diseases.” He felt that radium would revolutionize the medical world.

  She then learned of Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie, who in their Paris laboratory had made the radium discovery. But at that moment, Elizabeth, sitting by her father, could not have imagined that one day she would be a pupil in Madame Curie’s laboratory, or that she would come to know Madame Curie as well as she did. Elizabeth would also come to know and learn from Marie Curie’s daughter Irène, whose teachings she would take all the way to America.

  It was not surprising that Elizabeth, watching her father flourish in his career, would want to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, too. But she was surprised when he disapproved of her career choice. There were few women doctors, he told her, as it was a tough field for them. Elizabeth would have to choose something different if she desired his approval. She pondered this for a moment. She had chosen medicine not because she particularly liked it, but because she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. What did she truly want to do? She realized that she liked the study of chemistry better and decided to pursue that.

  During Elizabeth’s second year at the University of Budapest, her father died. To make matters worse, he had died from the same bacterial infection he had spent countless hours helping others overcome: erysipelas. It seemed that he had been treating an infected patient and, for some unfathomable reason, had neglected to wash his own hands before scratching his head, where a minor scab already existed. An especially nasty case of the infection took root, quickly spread, and killed him.

  Elizabeth returned to school with a heavy heart but determined to finish her studies. By the time she was twenty-one, she had received PhDs in chemistry, physics, and geochemistry. Despite all her studies, though, she still felt limited by her knowledge and yearned for more. Several of her friends and classmates had joined the technical Karlsruhe University in Germany, and she decided to follow them, eager to study under Georg Bredig, who at the time was one of the leading physical chemists in Europe.

  Most of the professors were stuffy, typical of those she had met before, but Professor Bredig had a warmth that reminded her of her father’s. When he invited her and the rest of the class to his house to continue the lessons, she accepted. It was there that Elizabeth met the professor’s wife, Rosa, a German cook who refined her skills by feeding the students and indulging in her favorite activity, baking cakes.

  While Elizabeth enjoyed those visits, there was one aspect she disliked. She was the only woman in Professor Bredig’s laboratory, so when the class was invited to his home, she was shuffled to the parlor or the kitchen with the other women, as they believed that she needed female companionship. This meant she couldn’t chat about science with the rest of the class. “The conversations dealt with children, cooking preserves; recipes were exchanged. To these discussions I could not contribute. How I longed to be with my colleagues, to hear and talk shop,” she later admitted. No one realized how much she detested those women’s conversations, and she did not have the heart to tell them.

  But rather than Bredig, it was Kazimierz Fajans who introduced her to the new field of radioactivity. This area of study would take hold of her imagination for many years to come. Professor Fajans, who also invited students to his house, did not discriminate. Women could join the scientific conversations there, and there Elizabeth found herself at home.

  She remained at Karlsruhe University for only eight months, studying briefly in London before returning home to Budapest at the outbreak of war in 1914. There she had the opportunity to work with George de Hevesy, who had just completed the first experiments using radioactive tracers to observe chemical processes—a technique that would win him the Nobel Prize almost thirty years later. Elizabeth’s interest in radiochemistry was growing, and in Hevesy’s lab, she used the radioactive tracers to determine how molecular layers dissolve.

  While her scientific work continued, Elizabeth could not completely cut herself off from the world at large. Events around her interfered, particularly in 1919, when the Communists took over Hungary. She later said that her birthday that year was the beginning of the end of her peaceful youth. She was supposed to meet her family at the opera for a celebration but had received a telephone call telling her to go home instead. A group of armed Communists had gone into the opera house and executed a Catholic priest.

  More troubles followed. The Communists took over Elizabeth’s apartment, leaving her and her mother with the use of only one room. They hid whatever money they had under wood paneling before the officers rummaged through everything they owned, looking for cash and other valuables. Unable to bear the situation, Elizabeth and her mother moved in with an aunt, whose house was already overcrowded. Not only were the living conditions terrible but also food was scarce, and what they could manage to buy was expensive. When money was not available, they had to pay with jewelry or clothing or even small furniture.

  The takeover lasted only several months but was followed by a counterrevolution known as the White Terror. The government imprisoned, tortured, and executed anyone suspected of Communist sympathizing. This included leftists, intellectualists, and some of Elizabeth’s colleagues. For a time, the laboratory was nearly empty, and she ended up teaching more courses than she thought she could handle. It was then that Otto Hahn, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, offered her a research grant and she resigned.

  She accepted the grant offer, and from that day forward, the study of radioactivity became her vocation.

  After the stint in Berlin, which lasted only months, while summering at an Austrian resort, Elizabeth heard a knock on the door of her bed-and-breakfast just a few days after her arrival. There stood Stefan Meyer, a short, middle-aged man with a wide and engaging smile. Meyer also happened to be the director of the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna.

  He had heard that she was in the area and wanted to meet her. It seemed that their interests overlapped, he told her. He asked if she would like to talk and maybe go on a hike in the surrounding countryside. She immediately said yes, and those talks and hikes continued for the rest of the summer. They chatted about science, and they chatted about nature. They talked about the travels they had both enjoyed, all while trying to identify the various types of grass and plants they encountered along the paths. It was a fun, relaxing, and enjoyable time.

  Before Meyer left, he asked Elizabeth to join his staff at the Institute for Radium Research. That summer was not only the start of a lovely friendship but also one of the longest job interviews ever conduc
ted. She agreed, happy to have another job in her field.

  By the time he met Elizabeth, Meyer was one of the pioneers in the field of radioactivity. At the Institute for Radium Research, he didn’t so much engage in new experiments as supervise those of the other scientists. He was looked upon as a master, an expert who was there to inspire and give guidance.

  The environment at the institute was inviting. “The atmosphere at the institute was most pleasant,” Elizabeth later said. “We were all members of one family. Each took an interest in the research of others, offering help in the experiments and ready to exchange ideas. Friendships developed that have lasted to the present day. The personality of Meyer and that of the associate director, Karl Przibram, had much to do with creating that pleasant atmosphere.”

  Although by this time Lise Meitner was succeeding in her field and making great advances in the sciences, there were moments when it still irritated her that she had not been allowed entrance to the Curie laboratory in Paris. On the one hand, she felt like a failure; a role model of hers had told her that she was not good enough to participate. On the other hand, those who were eagerly accepted by Madame Curie had arrived on her doorstep, suitcase in hand, unaware of what they were getting themselves into.