Introduction

When in 1907 the well-known nuclear physicist Lise Meitner left Vienna as a young Ph.D. to further her education at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin, she was on her arrival treated very differently than her male colleagues because at that time women were not yet officially admitted as students in any university in Prussia. The head of the university’s Chemistry Institute, and winner of the Nobel Prize, Professor Emil Hermann Fischer was known for not allowing female students in his institute rooms or in his lectures. When attending lectures, the studious Austrian had to hide in the space beneath the staggered wooden benches of the lecture hall, as it had been made clear to her that she was not wanted on the premises. She was initially also denied access to the chemistry laboratory, though Fischer eventually agreed on the condition that she would stay in the cellar of the Institute and never set foot in the upper floors. It was on such a condition that Meitner began her work in Berlin in a former woodworking workshop in the cellar of the Chemistry Institute, with a separate entrance and without a washroom. Although Max Planck, who at that time was teaching a course in Berlin on theoretical physics, missed no opportunity to fulminate against ‘mental Amazons’, Meitner was finally able to convince the scientist of her abilities. He allowed her to attend his lectures, and in 1912 he even appointed her as his first university assistant. ¹