Maria Goeppert Mayer (; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American
theoretical physicist
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experime ...
, and
Nobel laureate in
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
for proposing the
nuclear shell model
In nuclear physics, atomic physics, and nuclear chemistry, the nuclear shell model is a model of the atomic nucleus which uses the Pauli exclusion principle to describe the structure of the nucleus in terms of energy levels. The first shell m ...
of the
atomic nucleus
The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron ...
. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
. In 1986, the
Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award
The Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award is an annual prize presented by the American Physical Society in recognition of an outstanding contribution to physics research by a woman. It recognizes and enhances outstanding achievements by women physicists in t ...
for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.
A graduate of the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
, Goeppert Mayer wrote her doctoral thesis on the theory of possible
two-photon absorption
Two-photon absorption (TPA or 2PA) or two-photon excitation or non-linear absorption is the simultaneous absorption of two photons of identical or different frequencies in order to excite a molecule from one state (usually the ground state) to a hi ...
by atoms. At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...
in the 1960s later permitted this. Today, the unit for the two-photon
absorption cross section
Absorption cross section is a measure for the probability of an absorption process. More generally, the term cross section is used in physics to quantify the probability of a certain particle-particle interaction, e.g., scattering, electromagne ...
is named the Goeppert Mayer (GM) unit.
Maria Goeppert married
Joseph Edward Mayer and moved to the United States, where he was an associate professor at
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
. Strict rules against
nepotism prevented Johns Hopkins University from taking her on as a faculty member, but she was given a job as an assistant and published a landmark paper on
double beta decay
In nuclear physics, double beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which two neutrons are simultaneously transformed into two protons, or vice versa, inside an atomic nucleus. As in single beta decay, this process allows the atom to move clos ...
in 1935. In 1937, she moved to
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, where she took an unpaid position. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, she worked for the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
at Columbia on
isotope separation
Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes. The use of the nuclides produced is varied. The largest variety is used in research (e.g. in chemistry where atoms of "marker" n ...
, and with
Edward Teller
Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...
at the
Los Alamos Laboratory
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Ro ...
on the development of
thermonuclear weapons
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
.
After the war, Goeppert Mayer became a voluntary associate professor of Physics at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
(where her husband and Teller worked) and a senior physicist at the university-run
Argonne National Laboratory. She developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, which she shared with
J. Hans D. Jensen
Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (; 25 June 1907 – 11 February 1973) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium is ...
and
Eugene Wigner
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his co ...
. In 1960, she was appointed full professor of physics at the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
.
Early life
Maria Göppert was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz (now
Katowice,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
), a
Silesia
Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...
n city in
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
, the only child of paediatrician
Friedrich Göppert and his wife Maria née Wolff. In 1910, she moved with her family to
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.
General information
The ori ...
when her father, a sixth-generation university professor, was appointed as the professor of pediatrics at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
. Goeppert was closer to her father than to her mother. "Well, my father was more interesting", she later explained. "He was after all a scientist".
Göppert was educated at the ''Höhere Technische'' in Göttingen, a school for middle-class girls who aspired to higher education. In 1921, she entered the ''Frauenstudium'', a private high school run by
suffragettes that aimed to prepare girls for university. She took the ''
abitur'', the university entrance examination, at age 17, a year early, with three or four girls from her school and thirty boys. All the girls passed, but only one of the boys did.
In the Spring of 1924, Göppert entered the University of Göttingen, where she studied mathematics. A purported shortage of women mathematics teachers for schools for girls led to an upsurge of women studying mathematics at a time of high unemployment, and there was even a female professor of mathematics at Göttingen,
Emmy Noether
Amalie Emmy NoetherEmmy is the '' Rufname'', the second of two official given names, intended for daily use. Cf. for example the résumé submitted by Noether to Erlangen University in 1907 (Erlangen University archive, ''Promotionsakt Emmy Noeth ...
, but most were only interested in qualifying for their teaching certificates.
Instead, Goeppert became interested in physics, and chose to pursue a
PhD In her 1930 doctoral thesis
she worked out the theory of possible
two-photon absorption
Two-photon absorption (TPA or 2PA) or two-photon excitation or non-linear absorption is the simultaneous absorption of two photons of identical or different frequencies in order to excite a molecule from one state (usually the ground state) to a hi ...
by atoms.
Eugene Wigner
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his co ...
later described the thesis as "a masterpiece of clarity and concreteness". At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...
permitted the first experimental verification in 1961 when two-photon-excited fluorescence was detected in a
europium-doped crystal. To honor her fundamental contribution to this area, the unit for the two-photon
absorption cross section
Absorption cross section is a measure for the probability of an absorption process. More generally, the term cross section is used in physics to quantify the probability of a certain particle-particle interaction, e.g., scattering, electromagne ...
is named the "GM". One GM is 10
−50 cm
4 s photon
−1. Her examiners were three
Nobel prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
winners:
Max Born,
James Franck
James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate i ...
and
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (; 25 December 1876 – 9 June 1959) was a German chemist who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1928 for his work on sterols and their relation to vitamins. He was the doctoral advisor of Adolf Butenandt who also won ...
(in 1954, 1925, and 1928, respectively). With Max Born she co-authored some important works on the
lattice dynamics of crystals.
On January 19, 1930, Goeppert married
Joseph Edward Mayer, an American
Rockefeller fellow who was one of James Franck's assistants. The two had met when Mayer had boarded with the Goeppert family. The couple moved to Mayer's home country of the United States, where he had been offered a position as associate professor of chemistry at
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
. They had two children, Maria Ann (who later married
Donat Wentzel) and Peter Conrad.
United States
Strict rules against
nepotism prevented Johns Hopkins University from hiring Goeppert Mayer as a faculty member. These rules, created at many universities to prevent patronage, had by this time lost their original purpose and were primarily used to prevent the employment of women married to faculty members. She was given a job as an assistant in the physics department working with German correspondence, for which she received a very small salary, a place to work and access to the facilities. She taught some courses, and published an important paper on
double beta decay
In nuclear physics, double beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which two neutrons are simultaneously transformed into two protons, or vice versa, inside an atomic nucleus. As in single beta decay, this process allows the atom to move clos ...
in 1935.
There was little interest in
quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...
at Johns Hopkins but Goeppert Mayer worked with
Karl Herzfeld
Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld (February 24, 1892 – June 3, 1978) was an Austrian- American physicist.
Education
Herzfeld was born in Vienna during the reign of the Habsburgs over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "He came from a prominent, recentl ...
in this area. They collaborated on a number of papers, including a paper with Herzfeld's student A.L. Sklar on the spectrum of
benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar ring with one hydrogen atom attached to each. Because it contains only carbon and hydrogen atoms ...
. She also returned to Göttingen in the summers of 1931, 1932 and 1933 to work with her former examiner Born, writing an article with him for the ''Handbuch der Physik''. This ended when the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
came to power in 1933, and many academics, including Born and Franck, lost their jobs. Concerned by the 1933
anti-Jewish laws
Anti-Jewish laws have been a common occurrence throughout Jewish history. Examples of such laws include special Jewish quotas, Jewish taxes and Jewish "disabilities".
Some were adopted in the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy a ...
that ousted professors of Jewish descent, Goeppert Mayer as well as Herzfeld became involved in refugee relief efforts.
Joe Mayer was fired in 1937. He attributed this to the hatred of women on the part of the dean of physical sciences, which he thought was provoked by Goeppert Mayer's presence in the laboratory. Herzfeld agreed and added that, with Goeppert Mayer, Franck and Herzfeld all at Johns Hopkins, some thought that there were too many German scientists there. There were also complaints from some students that Mayer's chemistry lectures contained too much modern physics. Mayer took up a position at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, where the chairman of the physics department,
George B. Pegram, arranged for Goeppert Mayer to have an office, but she received no salary. She soon made good friends with
Harold Urey
Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in th ...
and
Enrico Fermi, who arrived at Columbia in 1939, with the three of them and their families living in nearby
Leonia, New Jersey. Fermi asked her to investigate the
valence shell
In chemistry and physics, a valence electron is an electron in the outer shell associated with an atom, and that can participate in the formation of a chemical bond if the outer shell is not closed. In a single covalent bond, a shared pair forms ...
of the undiscovered
transuranic elements
The transuranium elements (also known as transuranic elements) are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, which is the atomic number of uranium. All of these elements are unstable and decay radioactively into other elements. ...
. Using the
Thomas–Fermi model, she predicted that they would form a new series similar to the
rare earth elements
The rare-earth elements (REE), also called the rare-earth metals or (in context) rare-earth oxides or sometimes the lanthanides (yttrium and scandium are usually included as rare earths), are a set of 17 nearly-indistinguishable lustrous sil ...
. This proved to be correct. In 1941 she was elected a Fellow of the
American Physical Society.
Manhattan Project
![HD](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Maria_Goeppert-Mayer_portrait.jpg)
In December 1941, Goeppert Mayer took up her first paid professional position, teaching science part-time at
Sarah Lawrence College. In the spring of 1942, with the United States embroiled in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, she joined the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
. She accepted a part-time research post from Urey with Columbia University's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories. The objective of this project was to find a means of separating the
fissile
In nuclear engineering, fissile material is material capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction. By definition, fissile material can sustain a chain reaction with neutrons of thermal energy. The predominant neutron energy may be t ...
uranium-235
Uranium-235 (235U or U-235) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that exi ...
isotope in natural uranium; she researched the chemical and thermodynamic properties of
uranium hexafluoride
Uranium hexafluoride (), (sometimes called "hex") is an inorganic compound with the formula UF6. Uranium hexafluoride is a volatile white solid that reacts with water, releasing corrosive hydrofluoric acid. The compound reacts mildly with alumin ...
and investigated the possibility of separating isotopes by photochemical reactions. This method proved impractical at the time, but the development of lasers would later open the possibility of
separation of isotopes by laser excitation.
Through her friend
Edward Teller
Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...
, Goeppert Mayer was given a position at Columbia with the Opacity Project, which researched the properties of matter and radiation at extremely high temperatures with an eye to the development of the
Teller's "Super" bomb, the wartime program for the development of
thermonuclear weapon
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a low ...
s. In February 1945, Joe was sent to the
Pacific War, and Goeppert Mayer decided to leave her children in New York and join Teller's group at the
Los Alamos Laboratory
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Ro ...
. Joe came back from the Pacific earlier than expected, and they returned to New York together in July 1945.
In February 1946, Joe became a professor in the Chemistry Department and the new
Institute for Nuclear Studies
__NOTOC__
The Institute for Nuclear Studies was founded September 1945 as part of the University of Chicago with Samuel King Allison as director. On November 20, 1955, it was renamed The Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies. The name was s ...
at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
, and Goeppert Mayer was able to become a voluntary associate professor of physics at the school. When Teller also accepted a position there, she was able to continue her Opacity work with him. When the nearby
Argonne National Laboratory was founded on July 1, 1946, Goeppert Mayer was also offered a part-time job there as a senior physicist in the theoretical physics division. She responded, "I don't know anything about nuclear physics." She programmed the
Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
's
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
to solve criticality problems for a
liquid metal cooled reactor
A liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor, liquid metal fast reactor or LMFR is an advanced type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant is a liquid metal. Liquid metal cooled reactors were first adapted for nuclear submarine use and have been ...
using the
Monte Carlo method
Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be determi ...
.
Nuclear shell model
![Maria Goeppert-Mayer (3321963421)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Maria_Goeppert-Mayer_%283321963421%29.jpg)
During her time at Chicago and Argonne in the late 1940s, Goeppert Mayer developed a mathematical model for the structure of
nuclear shells, which she published in 1950. Her model explained why certain numbers of nucleons in an atomic nucleus result in particularly stable configurations. These numbers are what Eugene Wigner called ''
magic numbers'': 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. In an account relayed by Joe Mayer, Maria Goppert Mayer attained a critical insight while speaking with Enrico Fermi.
She had realised that the nucleus is a series of closed shells and pairs of neutrons and protons tend to couple together.
She described the idea as follows:
Three German scientists,
Otto Haxel,
J. Hans D. Jensen
Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (; 25 June 1907 – 11 February 1973) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium is ...
, and
Hans Suess
Hans Eduard Suess (December 16, 1909 – September 20, 1993) was an Austrian born American physical chemist and nuclear physicist. He was a grandson of the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess.
Career
Suess earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the U ...
, were also working on solving the same problem, and arrived at the same conclusion independently. While their results were announced in an issue of the
Physical Review before Goeppert Mayer in June 1949, Goeppert Mayer's work was received for review in February 1949, while the work of the German authors was received later in April 1949. Afterwards, she collaborated with them. Hans Jensen co-authored a book with Goeppert Mayer in 1950 titled ''Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure''. Goeppert Mayer was elected to the United States
National Academy of Sciences in 1956. In 1963, Goeppert Mayer, Jensen, and Wigner shared the
Nobel Prize for Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." She was the second female Nobel laureate in physics, after
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
, and would be the last for over half a century, until
Donna Strickland was awarded the prize in 2018.
Death and legacy
![Katowice - Tablica pamiątkowa - Maria Goeppert-Mayer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Katowice_-_Tablica_pami%C4%85tkowa_-_Maria_Goeppert-Mayer.JPG)
In 1960, Goeppert Mayer was appointed full professor of physics at the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
. Although she suffered from a stroke shortly after arriving there, she continued to teach and conduct research for a number of years. She was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, a member of the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, and received the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...
in 1965.
Goeppert Mayer died in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...
, on February 20, 1972, after a
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...
that had struck her the previous year left her
comatose. She was buried at
El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.
After her death, the
Maria Goeppert Mayer Award was created by the
American Physical Society (APS) to honor young female physicists at the beginning of their careers. Open to all female physicists who hold PhDs, the winner receives money and the opportunity to give guest lectures about her research at four major institutions. In December 2018, the APS named Argonne National Laboratory an APS Historic Site in recognition of her work. Argonne National Laboratory also honors her by presenting an award each year to an outstanding young woman scientist or engineer, while the University of California, San Diego hosts an annual Maria Goeppert Mayer symposium, bringing together female researchers to discuss current science.
Crater Goeppert Mayer on
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
, which has a diameter of about 35 km, is also named after Goeppert-Mayer. In 1996, she was inducted into the
National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2011, she was included in the third issuance of the ''American Scientists'' collection of US postage stamps, along with
Melvin Calvin
Melvin Ellis Calvin (April 8, 1912 – January 8, 1997) was an American biochemist known for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of h ...
,
Asa Gray, and
Severo Ochoa
Severo Ochoa de Albornoz (; 24 September 1905 – 1 November 1993) was a Spanish physician and biochemist, and winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Arthur Kornberg for their discovery of "the mechanisms in ...
. Her papers are in the
Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego,
and the university's physics department is housed in Mayer Hall, which is named after her and her husband.
See also
*
List of female Nobel laureates
*
Timeline of women in science
This is a timeline of women in science, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. While the timeline primarily focuses on women involved with natural sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, it also includes women f ...
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
Mayer, Maria Goeppert, 1906–1972at Scientific Biographies,
American Institute of Physics
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...
* including the Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1963 ''The Shell Model''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goeppert Mayer, Maria
1906 births
1972 deaths
20th-century American physicists
20th-century German physicists
20th-century American women scientists
American Nobel laureates
American nuclear physicists
American women physicists
Columbia University faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Physical Society
German emigrants to the United States
German Nobel laureates
German nuclear physicists
German women physicists
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Manhattan Project people
Nobel laureates in Physics
People from Katowice
People from the Province of Silesia
People from Leonia, New Jersey
Sarah Lawrence College faculty
University of California, San Diego faculty
University of Göttingen alumni
Women Nobel laureates
Women nuclear physicists
Women on the Manhattan Project
Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel
Members of the American Philosophical Society