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Above: The Uddman House in Kungälv where Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch stayed while visiting Eva von Bahr.  It was on this visit that Meitner and Frisch had the breakthrough insight that nuclei can undergo fission and release large amounts of energy. Photograph by Hesekiel. 

BERTA M. MORITZ 

Has a Ph.D. in Zoology/Biochemistry from the Univ. of Graz, Austria. She worked in pharmaceutical drug R&D in industry and academia.

Three pioneering women in science: a story of science, faith, and the power of friendship

This is the story of the intertwined personal and professional lives of three pioneering women of science, Lise Meitner, Elisabeth Schiemann, and Eva von Bahr, who lived in a time of great upheaval, marked both by great scientific triumphs and by the human disasters of the Nazi regime and two World Wars.

It is the story of their scientific contributions, their spiritual journeys, and their friendship that spanned fifty often-turbulent years. The story features many of the great names of twentieth century science, including the Nobel laureates Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, James Franck, Gustav Hertz, and Max von Laue. But the center of this story is Lise Meitner, who, although she missed out on the Nobel Prize, was herself a great name in science due to her discoveries in nuclear physics, one of which, the phenomenon of nuclear fission, was a turning point in world history.

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