Maria Goppert Mayer || Female scientist to receive the Nobel Prize

 Maria Goppert Mayer

Maria Goppert Meyer was born on 28 June 1906 in Germany. His father was a Pediatrician. When Maria was four years old, her family moved to Göttingen so that her father could teach there. Maria considered her father as her role model. His early education took place in a private school.

        At that time, Göttingen was a major world center of learning, especially physics. Maria found a very good scientific environment. Maria expressed a hypothesis during her research in the year 1930, according to which, if an electron revolving in the orbit of an atom jumps towards the nucleus, it emits two photons of energy. His calculation was proved experimentally true in the year 1960. Maria married Joseph E. Mayer, a physical chemist, in 1930, and the two moved to Baltimore. There Maria got an alternative job, and also got an office, but did not get salary. While living in Baltimore, they were blessed with a daughter, who was named Maria Ann. During this period, he also published Ten research papers and one book. In the year 1938, her husband lost his professorship at Johns Hopkins University, and she had to go to Columbia. There he wrote a book on statistical mechanics. During World War II, Maria worked on the separation of uranium isotopes. After the war, Columbia's physicists relocated to Chicago and Maria and her husband also had to move to Chicago.

        Maria worked at the Nuclear Studies Institute at the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory. In the year 1948, he started research work on Nuclear Shell Model. Chicago received Maria with great respect; But she continued working there also on an unpaid basis. In the year 1956, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Three years later, Maria and Joseph (her husband) accepted professorships at the new University of California campus in San Diego. In 1963, Maria jointly received the Nobel Prize for Physics with another scientist for the Nuclear Shell Model. Thus, she was the third female scientist to receive the Nobel Prize.

           When she received the Nobel Prize, the main headline in San Diego newspapers was 'S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Prize'. Maria did most of her scientific work as a volunteer. she died on February 20, 1972.