Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906-1972) was a German-born American Physicist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Nuclear Physics. She is our 5th installment of Women in Nuclear, and the best known for explaining nuclear shell model and double beta decay theory. The shell model deals with so called magic numbers: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126 and the question of why atoms with this number of protons or neutrons or both are more stable compared to other atoms.
1. Maria was born in Kattowitz (Katowice), Upper Silesia on June 28, 1906. At that time Kattowitz was part of Germany; today it belongs to Poland, since Poland did not exist as a country when she was born.
2. She was an only child, her father was a pediatrician and medical professor. They moved to Goettingen in 1910 when her father was appointed as the professor of pediatrics at the university. Maria stated that her father was always a role model for her.
3. Goeppert studied at a private high school aimed at preparing girls for so called “abitur” (maturity exam) to enter university. She passed the exam a year earlier, at the age of 17.
4. She entered the university of Goettingen to study mathematics first, since there was a shortage of women as teachers especially for mathematics. They even had a woman professor in mathematics there, the famous Emmy Noether.
5. Maria became more interested in physics, so she researched two-photon absorption. She received a doctorate in Physics with Max Born as her advisor.
6. At the university, she met Joseph (Joe) Edward Mayer, a theoretical chemist originally from the US. They moved to the United States since Joe was offered a position as associate professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. They had two children together.
7. Unfortunately she could not have a full-time paid job in the US at Johns Hopkins University due to strict “nepotism rules” that banned married couples from working at the same place. She was paid very little working as an assistant, but this did not discourage her from continuing her research and publishing.
8. She worked as one of very few women in the Manhattan Project during WWII. She had to make hard choices. In February 1945, Joe was sent to the Pacific War, and Goeppert Mayer decided to leave her children in New York and join Edward Teller’s group at the Los Alamos Laboratory.
9. Finally in 1960, she was appointed as a full professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego, just three years before receiving the Nobel prize.
10. She is best known for explaining nuclear shell model and double beta decay theory. The shell model deals with so called magic numbers: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126 and the question of why atoms with this number of protons or neutrons or both are more stable compared to other atoms.
11. In 1963, Goeppert Mayer, Jensen, and Wigner shared the Nobel prize for Physics “for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.”
12. Maria Goeppert Mayer died in San Diego, California, on February 20, 1972, after a heart attack.
13. After her death, the “Maria Goeppert Mayer Award” was created by the American Physical Society to honor young female physicists at the beginning of their careers.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Goeppert_Mayer
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/biographical/
https://scientificwomen.net/women/goeppert-mayer-maria-40
https://www.facebook.com/USWomeninNuclear/posts/6275899599111296?ref=embed_post