Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906–1972) was a German-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for her work on the nuclear shell structure. She was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Germany (now Katowice, Poland), and later became a naturalized American citizen.
Mayer earned her Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Göttingen in 1930. She faced challenges in her early career due to gender discrimination, but she continued her scientific pursuits. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project, contributing to the development of the atomic bomb.
Her groundbreaking work, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize, focused on the development of the nuclear shell model. Mayer, along with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Paul Wigner, made significant contributions to understanding the structure of atomic nuclei. They proposed a model that explained the arrangement of protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei in a way that resembled the structure of electron shells in atoms. This work laid the foundation for the understanding of the nuclear structure and was essential in advancing nuclear physics.
Maria Goeppert Mayer was the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Madame Curie, and her contributions have had a lasting impact on the field of nuclear physics. She passed away on February 20, 1972.
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