Outcasts and Opportunities:
The Effect of World War II on the Careers of Female Physicists
Objective
Students will learn about consequences of World War II, both positive and negative, specifically
through the eyes of female physicists working at the time.
Introduction
World War II (1939-1945) had an enormous impact on the scientific community and the women
who worked within it. On one hand, as men were called in to service, many positions became
available which, before the war, would not have been given to women.
Instructions
In small groups students will read the profiles of women scientists whose careers were affected by
WWII. Each group will select a scientist to research further. The instructor will lead a discussion in
which students share their findings.
In Class Time
45 minutes
Prep Time
15 minutes
Materials
 Library access
Discussion Questions
1. What new challenges did WWII pose for women scientists?
2. What new opportunities became available for women scientists in WWII?
3. How did the scientists’ country of origin or religion affect their careers during the war?
4. Whose career was affected the most by the war, and why?
5. What most interested or surprised you about these stories?
6. What question would you like to ask one of these women scientists?
Recommended Reading
 Byers, Nina and Gary Williams, eds. Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century
Women to Physics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
 Galison, Peter. “Marietta Blau: Between Nazis and Nuclei.” Physics Today, November (1997):
42–48.
 Grinstein, Louise, ed. Women in Chemistry and Physics: A Bibliographic Sourcebook. Wesport,
CT: Greenwood, 1993.
 Haber, Louis. Women Pioneers of Science. San Diego: Harcourt, 1979.
 Haines, Catherine. International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950. Santa
Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Ltd, 2001.
 Kass-Simon, G. and Patricia Farnes, eds. Women of Science: Righting the Record.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
 Libby, Leona Marshall. The Uranium People. New York: Crane Russak, 1979.
 McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and
Momentous Discoveries. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2001.
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Ogilvie, Marilyn. Women in Science: Antiquity through Nineteenth Century: A Biographical
Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.
Ogilvie, Marilyn and Joy Harvey, eds. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science:
Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Shearer, Benjamin and Barbara Shearer. Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A
Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997.
Perlmutter, Arnold. “More on Marietta Blau and the Physicists of Pre-, Postwar Vienna.”
Physics Today, August 1998: 81–83.
Reynolds, Moira Davidson. American Women Scientists: 23 Inspiring Biographies, 1900-2000.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co Inc., 2004.
Rife, Patricia. Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age. Boston: Birkhaeuser, 1999. pgs
357-376 (chronology of Meitner’s life and works)
Shearer, Benjamin and Barbara Shearer. Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A
Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997.
Yost, Edna. Women of Modern Science. New York: Dodd Mead, 1959.
Yount, Lisa. Contemporary Women Scientists. New York: Facts on File Inc., 1994.
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Careers Which Were Negatively Impacted by WWII
Marietta Blau
Marietta Blau (1894-1970) was an Austrian physicist who worked in various organizations and
institutes around Western Europe, studying high energy atomic particle interactions.
In 1938, she was living and working in Austria but, as a Jew, she
was forced to leave the country and abandon her research. This
caused a ten year break in her work as she moved around
Norway, Mexico and the United States as a refugee. Albert
Einstein was a passionate supporter of her work and contacted
the Mexican minister for education and obtained a job for her to
teach in Mexico. However, the harsh working conditions and
gender discrimination that she faced forced her to move to the
United States.
The work she had left behind was appropriated by her Austrian
colleagues, all of whom were members of the National Socialist
party and firmly believed in the contrast and differences
between so-called “Jewish Physics” and “German Physics”.
AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives,
Gift of Eva Connors
Her name is rarely mentioned, despite her pioneering work on photographic emulsions which
made it possible to obtain images of interactions within particle physics. Cecil Powell went on to
win the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of her earlier work.
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian nuclear physicist who moved to Berlin in 1901 to work
with chemist Otto Hahn on beta radiation.
She did not practice Judaism but her parents had Jewish heritage so
her place in Berlin during the war was uncertain. In 1938 the
National Socialist party banned “famous scientists” from “travelling
abroad” so that Meitner, among many others, was effectively trapped
in Berlin. Later that year, and unknown to her, renowned physicist
Niels Bohr had organized an escape route for Meitner, involving
travelling out of Germany through the Netherlands before going on
to Sweden. The plan involved notable physicists from various
countries, determined to help Meitner. This came after many
attempts from friends and colleagues trying to persuade her to
escape Germany while it was still possible. She later expressed her
regret at how long she took to leave Germany, rather than escaping
early on in the war. While she was forced to move to Sweden, her
long-time (German) collaborator Otto Hahn remained in Berlin to
carry on their research with colleague Fritz Strassmann.
AIP Emilio Segre Visual
Archives
Her isolation meant that she could not work as closely with Hahn as
she would have liked; she had to send letters with all of her findings
or theories, rather than discussing them with him and Strassmann. It
also would have been unwise to associate her surname with major scientific discoveries of the time,
due to the German government’s attitude to “Jewish Physics” as opposed to “German Physics”.
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These two factors combined to allow Hahn to publish their findings and publicly take responsibility
while Meitner could do little to show her involvement.
Due simply to Meitner’s Jewish heritage and Hahn arguably taking advantage of his higher social
standing at that time, she went largely unrecognized and Hahn won the Nobel Prize in Physics for
their work.
Careers Which Were Positively Impacted By WWII
Chien Shiung Wu
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was a Chinese-American nuclear
physicist.
She obtained her degree in Physics from National Central
University in Nanjing in 1934 and travelled to the US to pursue
her graduate studies in physics in 1936. She studied in
California and went on to become a renowned and respected
physicist.
Prior to War World II she was teaching at Princeton University
and Smith College. Her work in nuclear physics attracted the
attention of the US Government and they asked her to be part of
the Manhattan Project working on nuclear fission with the aim
of developing the atomic bomb. She helped to develop the
process used to separate the useful Uranium-235 from
Uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. Wu was one of the
few scientists, and one of very few women among them, who
was asked to stay on as a researcher at Columbia after the war.
AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives,
Physics Today Collection
She stayed at Columbia for almost 40 years after the war,
becoming a full professor after thirteen years, and it was there that she performed the experiments
that led to a Nobel Prize for her collaborators.
Leona Woods Marshall
Leona Woods Marshall (1919-1986) was an American physicist who
worked on the Manhattan Project.
While finishing her PhD at the University of Chicago, she met Herbert
Anderson, a physicist who worked for Enrico Fermi. He hired her as
soon as she finished her doctorate and she became part of the team that
built the first nuclear reactor.
During World War II, she carried on working with Enrico Fermi’s team
and became one of the most important members of the team working
on the atomic bomb.
Courtesy Brookhaven
National Laboratory
Following the war, she became a fellow at the Institute for Nuclear
Studies, run by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.
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