A tale of two unsung women Scientists

This is the story of two women scientists who were not as fortunate as madam Curie had been. One of them is Lise Meitner (1878-1968) and the other is Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958). American poet Robert Lee Frost had opined “Of all crimes the worst is to steal the glory”.  Meitner and Franklin are often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievements overlooked by the Nobel committee. Meitner was the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna. Women were not allowed to attend institutions of higher education in those days, but thanks to support from her parents, she was able to obtain private higher education, which she completed in 1901 with an "externe Matura" examination at the Akademisches Gymnasium. Following the doctoral degree she went to Berlin. Max Planck allowed her to attend his lectures, an unusual gesture by Planck, who until then had rejected any women wanting to attend his lectures. After one year, Meitner became Planck's assistant. During the first years she worked together with chemist Otto Hahn and discovered with him several new isotopes. In 1909 she presented two papers on beta-radiation. In 1917, she and Hahn discovered the first long-lived isotope of the element protactinium. In 1923, she discovered the cause, known as the Auger effect, of the emission from surfaces of electrons with 'signature' energies. In 1938 she was forced to emigrate from Germany as she was a Jew. She went to Stockholm, where she took up a post at Manne Siegbahn's laboratory, despite the difficulty caused by Siegbahn's prejudice against women in science. She continued to correspond with Hahn and other German scientists. It was politically impossible for the exiled Meitner to publish jointly with Hahn in 1939. Hann was a perfect experimenter and Meitner was a brilliant theorist. Hann’s experimental chemistry was able to discover the fission of Uranium into Barium and Krypton. Meitner realised that Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2, explained the source of the tremendous releases of energy in atomic decay, by the conversion of the mass into energy. Meitner recognized the possibility for a chain reaction of enormous explosive potential. However she refused an offer to work on the Manhattan project , declaring "I will have nothing to do with a bomb! In fact during the first world war she left her research work to serve as nurse handling X-ray equipment.  In 1944, Hahn received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Some historians who have documented the history of the discovery of nuclear fission believe Meitner should have been awarded the Nobel Prize with Hahn. Although Meitner criticized Hahn for doing nothing to protest against the crimes of Hitler's regime, they were lifelong friends. Though denied Nobel Prize she got other awards and recognition. Notable among which are Enrico Fermi Award and Max Planck Medal of the German Physics Society. The most prestigious honour was given to her posthumously in 1997 when element 109 was named Meitnerium in her honour.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin is the other unfortunate woman scientist whose contribution was not duly recognized. She was cheated of due recognition for the discovery of the DNA structure. Rosalind was a British biophysicist, physicist, chemist, biologist and X-ray crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, images and drafts were clandestinely used by Wilkins, Watson and Crick in formulating the DNA structure. After finishing her portion of the DNA work, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died at the age of 37 due to ovarian cancer. It seems strange that even in 1940’s women were not entitled a degree from Cambridge university. She received only titular degrees of her graduation and doctoral work. Her doctoral thesis was on "The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal and related materials". Her work helped spark the idea of high-strength carbon fibres.

It is said that she could not get the Nobel as the rules of the Nobel Prize forbid posthumous nominations. Since Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 she was not eligible for nomination to the Nobel Prize subsequently awarded to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins in 1962 for their work on Nucleic acid. Rosalind Franklin was discriminated against because of her gender. Her contribution to DNA structure was not acknowledged.