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