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Ruth Lewin Sime
A native of New York City who lives in northern California, has a degree from
Barnard College in mathematics and a doctorate from Harvard University in
physical chemistry. Having taught undergraduate chemistry at Sacramento
City College for many years, she has been concerned with attracting women
and minorities to the physical sciences. Sime's interest in history of science
began when she taught a women in science course and discovered that
surprisingly fittle was known of Lise Meitner's life and work. She has
published extensively on Meitner, including the biography Lise Meitner: ALife
in Physics, which appeared in 1996 and has been trans/ated into several
languages. Recent/y Sime retired from teaching to work on a study of
Meitner's colleagues Otto Hahn and Max von Laue during the Na tion al
Socialist years and the postwar periodo

Abstract: From Fermi to Fission: Meitner, Hahn, and Strassmann In
Berlin
After 1934, when Fermi suggested that the first transuranium elements had
been produced, the investigation was pursued most intensively by Lise
Meitner, a physicist, and the chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in
Berlin. Their discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 was a complete surprise,
and ali the apparent transuranium elements were proved false. My talk

focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of the work in Berlin, in particular the
prevailing concepts from nuclear physics and chemistry that misguided the
investigation for four years but which, in the end, made the fission discovery
possible.