Editing Lise Meitner (section)

==Later life==
[[File:Lise Meitner standing at meeting with Arthur H. Compton and Katherine Cornell.jpg|thumb |Meitner with actress [[Katharine Cornell]] and physicist [[Arthur Compton]] on 6 June 1946]]

Meitner found that Siegbahn did not want her. At the time the offer to come to Sweden had been extended, he had said that he had no money, and could only offer Meitner a place to work. Eva von&nbsp;Bahr had then written to [[Carl Wilhelm Oseen]], who had provided money from the [[Nobel Foundation]]. This left her with laboratory space, but now she had to perform work that she had been able to delegate to her laboratory technicians for the previous twenty years.{{sfn|Sime|1994|p=697}} Ruth Lewin Sime wrote that: {{blockquote|In Sweden there was no general sympathy for refugees from Nazi Germany: the country was small, with a weak economy and no immigrant tradition, and its academic culture had always been firmly pro-German, a tradition that did not change much until the middle of the war when it became obvious that Germany would not win. During the war, members of Siegbahn's group saw Meitner as an outsider, withdrawn and depressed; they did not understand the displacement and anxiety common to all refugees, or the trauma of losing friends and relatives to the Holocaust, or the exceptional isolation of a woman who had single mindedly devoted her life to her work.{{sfn|Sime|1994|p=697}} }}

On 14 January 1939, Meitner learned that her brother-in-law Jutz had been released from [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] and he and her sister Gusti were permitted to emigrate to Sweden.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=247}} Jutz's boss, [[Gottfried Bermann]], had escaped to Sweden,{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=247}} and he offered Jutz his old job back at the publishing firm if he was able to come. Niels Bohr interceded with a Swedish official, [[Supreme Court of Sweden|Justitieråd]] Alexandersson, who said that Jutz would receive a labour permit on arrival in Sweden. He worked there until he was pensioned off in 1948, and then moved to Cambridge to join Otto Robert Frisch.{{sfn|Frisch|1979|pp=205–207}} Her sister Gisela and brother-in-law Karl Lion moved to England,{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=215}} and Meitner also considered moving there. She visited Cambridge in July 1939 and accepted an offer from [[William Lawrence Bragg]] and [[John Cockcroft]] of a position at the [[Cavendish Laboratory]] on a three-year contract with [[Girton College, Cambridge]], but the [[Second World War]] broke out in September 1939 before she could make the move.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=278}}

In Sweden, Meitner continued her research as best she could. She measured the neutron cross sections of thorium, lead and uranium using [[dysprosium]] as a neutron detector,{{sfn|Sime|1994|p=697}} an assay technique pioneered by George de Hevesy and [[Hilde Levi]].{{sfn|Frisch|1979|pp=88–90}} She was able to arrange for Hedwig Kohn, who faced deportation to Poland, to come to Sweden, and eventually to emigrate to the United States, travelling via the [[Soviet Union]]. She was unsuccessful in bringing Stefen Meyer out of Germany,{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=285–288}} but he managed to survive the war.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=313}} She declined an offer to join Frisch on the [[British contribution to the Manhattan Project]] at the [[Los Alamos Laboratory]], declaring "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!"{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=305}} She later said that the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] had come as a surprise to her, and that she was "sorry that the bomb had to be invented".{{sfn|Dawidoff|1994|p=228}} After the war, Meitner acknowledged her own moral failing in staying in Germany from 1933 to 1938. She wrote: "It was not only stupid but very wrong that I did not leave at once."{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=310}} She regretted her own inaction during this period, and was also bitterly critical of Hahn, Max von&nbsp;Laue, [[Werner Heisenberg]], and other German scientists. In a June 1945 letter addressed to Hahn, that he never received, she wrote: {{blockquote|You all worked for Nazi Germany. And you did not even try passive resistance. Granted, to absolve your conscience you helped some oppressed person here and there, but millions of innocent human beings were murdered and there was no protest. Here in neutral Sweden, long before the end of the war, there was discussion of what should be done with German scholars once the war is over. What then must the English and Americans be thinking? I and many others are of the opinion that the one path for you would be to deliver an open statement that you are aware that through your passivity you share responsibility for what has happened, and that you have the need to work for what can be done to make amends. But many think it is too late for that. These people say that first you betrayed your friends, then your men and your children in that you let them stake their lives on a criminal war – and finally that you betrayed Germany itself, because when the war was already quite hopeless, you never once spoke out against the meaningless destruction of Germany. That sounds pitiless but nevertheless I believe that the reason I write this to you is true friendship. In the last few days one had heard of the unbelievably gruesome things in the concentration camps; it overwhelms everything one previously feared. When I heard on English radio a very detailed report by the English and Americans about [[Belsen]] and [[Buchenwald]], I began to cry out loud and lay awake all night. And if you had seen those people who were brought here from the camps. One should take a man like Heisenberg and millions like him, and force them to look at these camps and the martyred people. The way he turned up in Denmark in 1941 is unforgettable.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=310}} }}

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, Meitner became a celebrity. She had a radio interview with [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], and a few days later another one with a radio station in New York, during which she heard her sister Frida's voice for the first time in years.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=310}} "I am of Jewish descent", she told Frida, "I am not Jewish by belief, know nothing of the history of Judaism, and do not feel closer to Jews than to other people."{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=315–316}} On 25 January 1946, Meitner arrived in New York, where she was greeted by her sisters Lola and Frida, and by Frisch, who had made the two-day train trip from Los Alamos. Lola's husband [[Rudolf Allers]] arranged a visiting professorship for Meitner at the [[Catholic University of America]]. Meitner lectured at [[Princeton University]], [[Harvard University]] and [[Columbia University]], and discussed physics with Albert Einstein, [[Hermann Weyl]], [[Tsung-Dao Lee]], [[Yang Chen-Ning]] and [[Isidor Isaac Rabi]]. She went to [[Durham, North Carolina]] and saw Hertha Sponer and Hedwig Kohn, and spent an evening in Washington, DC, with James Chadwick, who was now the head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project. She also met the project's director, [[Major General (United States)|Major General]] [[Leslie Groves]]. She spoke at [[Smith College]], and went to Chicago, where she met Enrico Fermi, [[Edward Teller]], [[Victor Weisskopf]] and Leo Szilard.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=330–333}} On 8 July, Meitner boarded the {{RMS|Queen Mary||6}} for England, where she met with [[Erwin Schrödinger]], Wolfgang Pauli and Max Born. There were belated celebrations for the 300th birthday of [[Isaac Newton]], but the only German invited to attend was Max Planck.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=334–335}}

[[File:Chemist Lise Meitner with students.jpg|thumb|left|Meitner with students on the steps of the chemistry building at [[Bryn Mawr College]] in April 1959]]

For her friends in Sweden, Siegbahn's opposition to Meitner's Nobel Prize was the final straw, and they resolved to get her a better position. In 1947, Meitner moved to the [[Royal Institute of Technology]] (KTH) in Stockholm, where {{ill|Gudmund Borelius|sv}} established a new facility for atomic research. There had been scant nuclear physics research in Sweden, which was blamed on Siegbahn's lack of support for Meitner's work, and now such knowledge seemed vital for Sweden's future. At the KTH, Meitner had three rooms, two assistants, and access to technicians, with [[Sigvard Eklund]] occupying the room next door. The intention was that Meitner would have the salary and title of a "research professor"—one without teaching duties.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=347–348}}

The professorship fell through when the [[Ministry of Education and Research (Sweden)|Minister for Education]], [[Tage Erlander]], unexpectedly became the [[Prime Minister of Sweden]] in 1946, but Borelius and Klein ensured that she had the salary of a professor, if not the title.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=358–361}} In 1949, she became a Swedish citizen, but without surrendering her Austrian citizenship thanks to a special act passed by the [[Riksdag]]. Plans were approved for [[R1 (nuclear reactor)|R1]], Sweden's first nuclear reactor, in 1947, with Eklund as the project director, and Meitner worked with him on its design and construction. In her last scientific papers in 1950 and 1951, she applied [[Magic number (physics)|magic numbers]] to nuclear fission.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=358–361}} She retired in 1960 and moved to the UK where many of her relatives were.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=Richard |last=Webb |title=Lise Meitner – Physicist who co-discovered nuclear fission |magazine=New Scientist |url=https://www.newscientist.com/people/lise-meitner/ |access-date=9 July 2024 |archive-date=10 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240810020812/https://www.newscientist.com/people/lise-meitner/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the 1950s and 1960s, Meitner enjoyed visiting Germany and staying with Hahn and his family for several days on different occasions.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=365}} Hahn wrote in his memoirs that he and Meitner had remained lifelong close friends.{{sfn|Hahn|1966|p=51}} Even though their friendship was full of trials, arguably more so experienced by Meitner, she "never voiced anything but deep affection for Hahn".{{sfn|Cropper|2004|p=343}} On occasions such as their 70th, 75th, 80th and 85th birthdays, they addressed recollections in each other's honour. Hahn emphasised Meitner's intellectual productivity, and work such as her research on the nuclear shell model, always passing over the reasons for her move to Sweden as quickly as possible. She emphasised Hahn's personal qualities, his charm and musical ability.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=365}}

[[File:Lise Meitner Grave.jpg|thumb|Meitner's grave in [[Bramley, Hampshire]]]]

A strenuous trip to the United States in 1964 led to Meitner having a heart attack, which she spent several months recovering from. Her physical and mental condition was weakened by [[atherosclerosis]]. After breaking her hip in a fall and suffering several small strokes in 1967, Meitner made a partial recovery, but was eventually weakened to the point where she had to move into a Cambridge nursing home.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=379}} Meitner died in her sleep on 27 October 1968 at the age of 89. She was not informed of the deaths of Otto Hahn on 28 July 1968 or his wife Edith on 14 August, as her family believed it would be too much for someone so frail.<ref name="nytobit">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/10/28/archives/lise-meitner-dies-atomic-pioneer-89-lise-meitner-physicist-is-dead.html|title=Lise Meitner Dies; Atomic Pioneer, 89. Lise Meitner, Physicist, Is Dead. Paved Way for Splitting of Atom.|date=28 October 1968|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=18 April 2008|archive-date=23 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180723065420/https://www.nytimes.com/1968/10/28/archives/lise-meitner-dies-atomic-pioneer-89-lise-meitner-physicist-is-dead.html|url-status=live}}</ref> As was her wish, she was buried in the village of [[Bramley, Hampshire|Bramley]] in Hampshire, at [[St James' Church, Bramley|St James parish church]], close to her younger brother Walter, who had died in 1964.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=380}} Her nephew Frisch composed the inscription on her headstone. It reads:
{{blockquote|Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=380}}}}