University of chicago 1930 dr. mayer series#

Why Did I Choose to Research Maria Goeppert Mayer? As fate would have it, Mayer’s discoveries earned her a place among the most influential theoretical physicists of all time. She maintained her focus and allowed her passion for physics to pave the path to greatness. Her journey included countless ups and downs, from unfair treatment in the education system to lengthy periods of unemployment. Regardless of these hindering obstacles, Mayer never strayed from her goals. A short while later, however, she suffered from a stroke and passed away at 65 years old, on February 20, 1972.Īlthough Maria Goeppert Mayer passed away almost 50 years ago, her legacy lives on, both in the field of science and the realm of feminism.

She was the second woman ever to receive such an accolade, after Marie Curie in 1903.īy the time Mayer received her Nobel recognition, she had been appointed a professor at the University of California in San Diego this marked her as the seventh generation of Mayers to be granted professorship. About 13 years after they had met, Mayer and Jensen were awarded a shared Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. The two became friends and even authored a novel together on their shared model, titled Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure. Meanwhile, Hans Jensen, another nuclear physicist, had been working on a similar theory, and his paper was to be published in the Physical Review in the same issue as Mayer’s. She overcame the challenges that came with weighty scientific protocol and gathered wide scale support for her findings. Mayer further examined the idea and accumulated tons of evidence to support it. This realization prompted the scientists to create a model of nucleon shells, similar to those formed by electrons.

University of chicago 1930 dr. mayer series#

They discovered a series of “magic numbers.” Atoms with a “magic number” of nucleons (protons and neutrons) had greater stability than all others. While at the University of Chicago, Mayer and her colleague, Edward Teller, studied nuclear shells and created a mathematical model based on the patterns they noted. For once, the faculty greeted Maria with open arms, and she received a full-time position in the Theoretical Physics division as a Senior Physicist. However, her greatest opportunity arose when her husband took a position at the University of Chicago. In the following years, Mayer worked at several renowned institutions, such as Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Herzfeld, where she transitioned into a chemical physicist. For a while, she worked alongside Karl F. She continued to independently study physics and worked for little to no pay. The Great Depression was setting in, and they could not afford another employee, especially one that was a woman. Although Maria also had the qualifications to be a professor or lead researcher, the college denied her a job. Her husband began working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Soon after the marriage, the couple moved to the United States of America. They would go on to have two children: Maria Ann Wentzel and Peter Conrad. In 1930, the same year that she received her doctorate, Maria married Dr. One of her most popular quotes reads, “My father said, ‘Don’t grow up to be a woman,’ and what he meant by that was, a housewife.” Her family’s support and open-minded views allowed Maria to receive a good education: she graduated from the University of Göttingen and earned her Ph.D. However, Maria’s father always wanted more for his daughter. Germany did not offer many educational opportunities for females past high school, and most women were discouraged from abandoning the traditional housewife pathway. Only four of her fellow classmates passed the exam, which was far from surprising. Although the school closed before Maria could graduate, being surrounded by these powerful women at such a young age likely inspired her to reach for her own dreams and disregard all gender barriers.Ī year after the closure in 1923, Maria took the Abitur, the college entrance exam at the time, and enrolled in the University of Göttingen that spring. This school’s faculty included many women’s rights activists, who advocated for suffrage. When Maria was about 4 years old, her family relocated to Göttingen, where she attended an all-girls grammar school. Her father taught pediatrics at the University of Göttingen, and her mother was a music instructor.

On June 28, 1906, Maria nee Wolff and Friedrich Goeppert welcomed their newborn daughter into Kattowitz (then, a city in Germany).