Overlooked for the Nobel: Lise Meitner and the discovery of fission

The discovery of the phenomenon of fission was a momentous discovery that certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. Despite being a central character in this discovery, Lise Meitner was overlooked for the Nobel and it was awarded to her collaborator Otto Hahn alone. The journey of Lise Meitner from her early childhood to one of the great scientists of the 20th Century is a testimony to her grit and single-minded devotion to Physics in overcoming prejudice, misogyny, and lack of opportunities. In this talk, I shall try to give a glimpse of her epic and awe-inspiring journey.

This is a joint GIPWG Pavinari-ASET Colloquium.

About the Speaker:

Amit Roy completed his Masters in Physics from Delhi University in 1968 and his Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai in 1975 where he continued till 1990 as Associate Professor investigating symmetries in Nuclear Physics. He spent two years at Florida State University, USA as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and has worked at KVI, Netherlands and Argonne National Laboratory, USA as visiting scientist. He joined Inter-University Accelerator Centre (formerly Nuclear Science Centre) as a senior scientist in 1991 and was its director from 2001 till July 2013. He led the team for building the Superconducting Linac at IUAC and pioneered the development of the Niobium superconducting cavity for accelerators in India. He was DAE Raja Ramanna Fellow at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata, till May 2017. He has been a Guest Lecturer at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata and is an Advisor at Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences. 

His research interests are in Nuclear Physics, Accelerator Physics and Atomic Physics. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India. He received the Eminent Scientist award of the Indian Nuclear Society and the Meghnad Saha Memorial Lecture award from NASI. He has served as a member of Governing Boards and Councils of several institutes and as a member of many National and International Scientific and Technical Committees. He was President of the Indian Cryogenics Council for two terms and Chairman of the Asian Committee of Future Accelerators for one term. He enjoys communicating science and has written the Great experiments in Physics series in the journal of Science Education, Resonance and a book by the same name.