MAYER, MARIA GOEPPERT

Physicist (1906 - 1972)

She won the Nobel prize in physics for her ground breaking work in models of the nucleus of atoms. She was the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics (the first woman to ever win a Nobel prize in physics was Marie Curie). She shared the prize with J.H.D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner of Princeton, although she did her work independently.

She was born in Katowice, Poland and received her doctorate degree from the University of Gottingen, Germany, in 1930. She then married an American chemist, Joseph Mayer and moved to the United States. She worked at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University , and the University of Chicago. She became a full professor at Chicago in 1959. While at Chicago she was also affiliated with the Argonne National Laboratory.

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