Story of Maria Mayer | The Queen of Nuclear Research

To date, 51 women have won the prestigious Nobel Prize in distinguished fields. Maria Goeppert Mayer is one such member of this elite club, who became the first woman ever to receive this noble honor in the field of theoretical Nuclear Physics.

Many people believe that Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel in this field. No doubt, she was the first woman ever to have won this award in 1903, but the lady won it for her work on Radioactivity, not Nuclear Physics. It was Maria Mayer who first won it in the field of Nuclear Physics.

Born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Maria was always encouraged by her father to grow up to be more than a housewife. So, after attending public school and a college preparatory academy for girls, she entered the University of Göttingen in 1924. Initially, she intended to study mathematics. But one fine day, she got an opportunity to attend a seminar on Quantum mechanics by Max Born. This seminar changed her perspective forever and she decided to switch her focus to physics. And consequently, she completed her Ph.D. in 1930, with a thesis on double photon reactions.

After completing her Ph.D., she married the American chemical physicist Joseph E. Mayer. Together they moved to the United States. For years after moving to the United States, Nepotism and gender bias kept on playing its part. Despite being highly deserving, Maria was only getting job offers with no pay or unofficial jobs in University laboratories. But the lady never gave up!

In 1939, she and her husband both received appointments in chemistry at Columbia University. There, Maria worked on the separation of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb project. The couple remained at Columbia throughout World War II.

After World War II, Maria shifted her focus to nuclear physics, unknowingly setting herself on a path to the most groundbreaking discovery of her life. During that time, studying the nuclear structure and magic numbers was one of the hottest topics of research. In 1937, Neil's Bohr and F. Kalcar proposed the Liquid drop model of the nucleus, where the atomic nucleus as compared to a liquid drop. Though this model was of utmost importance to understand some of the basics of binding energies. But, it could not explain why some nuclei having protons or neutrons or both as 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126 (magic numbers) have higher binding energies, making them more stable than others. This led scientists to find a better model for enhanced explanations. This is where Maria Mayer's shell model came into the picture.

Although, the shell model was first proposed by Dmitry Ivanenko in 1932. But, to understand the ambiguity about magic numbers, it was further developed independently by Maria Goeppert-Mayer along with some other physicists in 1949.

The nuclear shell model is partly analogous to the atomic shell model and describes the arrangement of electrons in an atom, with a filled shell resulting in greater stability.

Maria's model proved instrumental in explaining the existence of magic numbers and the stability and high binding energy on the basis of closed shells. It also provided an explanation for the ground state spins and the magnetic dipole moment of nuclei. This enhancement of the shell model led Maria Mayer to step up to the podium in Stockholm, Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.

Not only this, but Maria's other works have also acted as theoretical bases for several important developments in laser physics, laser isotope separation, double-beta decay, and molecular orbital calculation. During World War II, she contributed significantly as a member of the Manhattan Project team. Maria also worked as a lecturer in some distinguished institutes. This includes accepting an appointment at the University of California at San Diego in 1960.

Goeppert-Mayer died due to heart failure in San Diego, California, on February 20, 1972, aged 65.

Maria's life is nothing short of an inspiration. Though she faced some problems at the beginning of her career, her perseverance helped her pave her way through all the obstacles, consequently winning the highest honor in the field of Science.

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