Maria Goeppert Mayer

By: Miranda Reynolds

Birth

• Born June 28th, 1906

• Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, then Germany

• Parents: Friedrich Goeppert and Maria

• Only Child

• On her father's side she is the 7th straight generation of university professors.

• In the spring of 1924 she enrolled at the University at Göttingen

• More attracted to physics

• Than becoming a mathematician

• Deeply indebted to Max Born.

• took her doctorate in 1930 in theoretical physics

• Karl F. Herzfeld took an interest in her work

• she slowly developed into a chemical physicist

• She wrote many papers with Herzfeld and her husband

• she started to work on the color of organic molecules

• 1939, Maria and her husband went to Columbia

• Maria taught 1 year at Sarah Lawrence College.

• Maria mainly worked at the S.A.M laboratory

• on the separation of isotopes of uranium, with Harold Urey

• In 1946 Maria and her husband went to Chicago

• first place where she was not considered a nuisance

• Maria was suddenly a Professor in the Physics Department

• and in the Institute for Nuclear Studies

• also employed by the Argonne National Laboratory

• very little knowledge of Nuclear Physics

• In 1948 she started to work on the magic numbers

• took her another year to find their explanation

• and several years to work out most of the consequences

• In 1960 they came to La Jolla

• Maria Goeppert Mayer is a professor of physics

• member of the National Academy of Sciences

• Also a member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Heidelberg

• has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Science from Russel Sage College

• Mount Holyoke College

• and Smith College.

• Maria and her husband have two children

• both born in Baltimore

• Maria Ann Wentzel, now in Ann Arbor

• and a son, Peter Conrad, a graduate student of economics in Berkeley.

Works Cited

• http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1963/mayer-bio.html