Trijumf otkrića i: intelektualne biografije fizičarki Irene Žolio Kiri, Lize Majtner i Marije Gepert Majer
The Triumph of Discovery I: Intellectual Biographies of Physicists Irène Joliot Curie, Lise Meitner and Maria Goeppert Mayer

Summary/Abstract: This essay analyses lives and works of three distinguished female physicists of the 20th century - Irène Joliot Curie, Lise Meitner and Maria Goeppert Mayer. The essay emphasizes the obstacles that existed regarding the possibilities for education and then employment in laboratories, institutes and universities, obstacles that often prevent women from doing scientific research. Those obstacles include institutional discrimination of women (in the educational system and in the employment policies), but also tell us about the world of science as the men’s world in which women rarely got an access and had a lot of difficulties to win the right to be a part of that world. On the other side, this essay indicates, using the example of these three female physicists, although they are certainly not the only ones, that women are credited for some of the most important discoveries in the 20th century physics, or they were important part of teams that came up with great discoveries: the discovery of the nuclear fission, the nuclear shell model (the first successful model of the atomic nucleus), the discovery of the Higgs boson. Pursuing that line in reasoning, the article also indicates a surprisingly small number of women who won the Nobel Prize for physics.

• Details
• Contents