Professor David Wolfe
Lise Meitner: The Woman Who Broke the Atom
Summary
This lecture highlights the life and contributions of Lise Meitner, a physicist who faced obstacles as a woman in a male-dominated field and made significant contributions to nuclear physics. It highlights her escape from Nazi Germany and her collaboration with Otto Hahn in discovering nuclear fission.
Professor David Wolfe
David Wolfe received a PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught and researched at the Universities of Chicago, Washington, New Mexico, and Cape Town. His research was in high-energy experimental physics, and he worked at most of the major accelerator centers in the world, including Brookhaven, Fermilab, and CERN. In the 1990s he was involved in work on nuclear non-proliferation with former Soviet Union countries. For many years he has been involved with the UK Institute of Physics (IOP) and the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP). They run training programs for secondary school teachers in Soweto, Eastern Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal, and Limpopo and plan to expand this program through all nine provinces.