Physicist Lise Meitner’s brilliance led to the discovery of nuclear fission. But her long time collaborator Otto Hahn, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry without her in 1944, even though she had given the first theoretical explanation.
Albert Einstein called Meitner “our Marie Curie." She also adamantly refused to work on the atomic bomb during WWII. https://whyy.org/articles/lise-meitner-the-forgotten-woman-of-nuclear-physics-who-deserved-a-nobel-prize/ #science #history
@Sheril Nobel typically awards based on lab results, not theoretical research. Dr Lise Meitner figured out what Hahn (et al) had observed, but the discovery wasn't hers...
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
@not2b @Sheril I have to say, a lot of contemporaries really liked Dr Meitner.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=6097
@JonKramer @Sheril One thing that handicaps the theorists is that you have to be alive and your theory has to be confirmed. If the confirmation happens after your death, sorry, no Nobel. But for DNA, the lab work was by Rosalind Franklin and Watson and Crick were the theorists, and yet she was denied.
@JonKramer Probably too much discussion in someone else's thread so I will let it go.
@not2b, no, enough. I learned a misconception I had. And it addressed the OPs' post. The best type of thread right here.
Thanks.
@JonKramer @Sheril I have read that there was a dispute about Eddington's data confirming general relativity (light bending measurement during a solar eclipse).
@not2b @Sheril when I look at those types of experiments, I am astounded, and have a hard time believing anyone got any credible results. Atmospheric refraction should have introduced so much noise in the data that the results were meaningless. But, they still did it. I would have loved to hear the arguments that went on before anything like that was accepted. But, I'm sitting here with the advantage of having seen confirmed photos of gravitational lensing, and several million transistors in my hand. They had three sticks, and a grandparent that discovered fire. It's astonishing.
@JonKramer @Sheril That's not correct. Nobel prizes honor both confirmed theories and laboratory discoveries. Example: Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize purely for his theoretical work, but it wasn't awarded until the Higgs boson was discovered.