“Winning the prize wasn’t half as exciting as doing the work itself,” said German physicist and mathematician, Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Elucidated, this quote states the known facts about how the work is always the best part of experimenting. The prize initially tells everyone the correct answer to this equation has been found and who solved it first. Years were put into this theory, memories are made, knowledge is found. The work placed into this theory was more exciting, actually doing something is better than hearing a name being called, telling the world who discovered what, and gaining a medal. Maria Goeppert-Mayer was an important and influential figure in science that had a positive impact on the world because of her discovery of the Nuclear Shell Model.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer was born June 28, 1906 in Kattowitz, Germany, which is now called Katowice, Poland. Goeppert-Mayer was the lone born child of Maria Nee Wolf and Friedrich Goeppert, a professor of Pediatrics at the University of Gottingen. Maria was then educated at the Höhere Technishe, a school for middle-class young women who pursue a higher education. In 1921, Goeppert-Mayer entered the Frauenstudium, a private high school operated by suffragettes that strived to prepare students for university. Post- World War I inflation initially caused the Frauenstein to shut down by her junior year of highschool. Due to the school closing, Maria took the abitur, the university entrance examination, and enrolled into the University of Göttingen Spring of 1924. Once enrolled, Goeppert-Mayer studied mathematics, until she became interested physics and chose to persevere a Ph.D. In 1927, Dr. Friedrich Goeppert died. On January 19, 1930, Goeppert-Mayer gained the surname Mayer by marrying Joseph Edward Mayer, an American Rockefeller.
Maria’s father, Friedrich Goeppert, was quite stern with his child’s future. Friedrich, was the sixth-generation university professor, and he planned for Maria to become a professor as well. Goeppert-Mayer took an interest in mathematics and science during the stages of growing up. “Well, my father was more interesting,” Maria later explained. “He was after all a scientist.” (ScientificWomen.) (Maria graduated with a doctorate in theoretical physics towards the end of 1930, having concluded her dissertation on the theoretical treatment of double-photon processes. Goeppert-Mayer and husband, Joseph Edward Mayer, moved to the United States, where she then worked in the chemistry department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Patience was a key element Maria needed during these times, she was forced to spend many years in unsalaried positions before she was able to obtain a professorship in physics.
In the spring of 1942, Goeppert-Mayer began working at the Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratory at Columbia University. The SAM project calculated uranium isotopes, mainly on how to separate U-235 from natural uranium in order to create an atomic bomb. Maria and her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Goeppert-Mayer accepted professorships at the university of Chicago’s chemistry department and the university’s Institute for Nuclear Studies at the Argonne National Laboratory. Maria volunteered at both the institute and in the university’s physics department as an associate professor of physics. At the Argonne National Laboratory, Goeppert-Mayer began studying nuclear physics. Goeppert-Mayer developed the nuclear spin-orbit coupling theory in 1948. The spin-orbit theory states that the nucleon has contrasting energies when spinning around the center of the nucleus in either the same or the opposite sense. Goeppert-Mayer awaited to publish a paper on her theory, even though others were still working on the shell theory. In 1955, German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen and Goeppert-Mayer published Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure, mainly written by Goeppert-Mayer. In 1960, both Mayers were offered full professorships at the University of California. Maria had a stroke, fall of 1960, but kept pushing herself Goeppert-Mayer’s dissertation,said in 1930, proposed that an electron orbiting an atom’s nucleus would, when jumping to a closer orbit, give off two photons of light. This theory was not verified experimentally until later on in the 1960s. Nuclear physicists have developed more upon Goeppert-Mayer’s magic numbers and used these numbers to build a silicon isotope with double the amount of neutrons to protons. Goeppert-Mayer was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for theoretical physics and the second woman in history to earn a Nobel Prize, the first being Marie Curie. Goeppert-Mayer was greatly acclaimed for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer made important discoveries about nuclear structure and published her paper telling information explaining the evidence behind the nuclear shell model, which reports for many properties of atomic nuclei. Her discovery earned the United States knowledge on a subject not fully known about. The understanding of nuclear properties, and the split atom, gained the United States valuable information on what can be built, and what can be gained from the use of nuclear energy. If Goeppert-Mayer had never been born, science today would not understand the full effect of nuclear energy and how it can be used, and what it can build. There would be different theories of the nuclear shell model, the same information will not be achieved if Goeppert-Mayer did not perform an experiment.
Goeppert-Mayer grew up with strict parents. She was told at an early age that she was expected to become a professor. Maria worked hard in school, she made sure she would make it into university. Goeppert-Mayer had patience, because without patience no one would spend years searching for the solution to a question, unless they were patient and were persistent with their work. Maria and her husband were dedicated to the scientific field. Goeppert-Mayer worked hard and succeeded in education all her life, these values are important to have as a person. Many people do not have these values and it truly shows. Minds can be trained to have these values and use them throughout the rest of their days. Goeppert-Mayer had amazing characteristics; she never gave up on her beliefs and works, and kept pushing herself to the limit. Maria Goeppert-Mayer is someone to follow, someone to look up too.
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