The prototypical female scientist of the early twentieth century was a woman devoted to her work, sacrificing family and personal relationships in favor of science; modestly brilliant; generous; and underrecognized. In many ways Austrian-born physicist Lise Meitner embodies that image. In 1938, along with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, Meitner developed the theory behind nuclear fission that would eventually make possible the creation of the atomic bomb . She and lifelong collaborator Otto Hahn made several other key contributions to the field of nuclear physics. Although Hahn received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1944, Meitner did not share the honor--one of the more frequently cited examples of the sexism rife in the scientific community in the first half of the twentieth century.

Elise Meitner was born November 7, 1878, to an affluent Vienna family. Her father Philipp was a lawyer and her mother Hedwig traveled in the same Vienna intellectual circles as...