a cursory google search for women physicists in the manhatten project reveals wayyyy too much information to summarize appropriately , however , some names include Lise Meitner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer , Leona Woods Marshall , Chien-Shiung Wu , there are many more - -
not just typing and answering phones and taking care of kids , although these are important tasks
many other sources detailing many more people , many !
Lise Meitner was not part of the Manhattan project. She was the first person to realize that nuclear fission had taken place in a lab, and the most probable mechanism, after “the two Ottos” had sent her some curious lab results. Of course the Otto Hahn got the credit and the Nobel prize.
She was Otto Frisch’s auntie, though. She discussed that very letter with her nephew over the 1938 holidays while he was visiting her in exile. They came up with the term “fission” as a better, more accurate term for what Hahn had described as “bursting an atom” in his letter.
So I just finished watching the film. It was OK, I guess, but honestly I was expecting a lot more time to be spent showing the actual science and logistics that went into making the bomb. And not quite so much time on the Senate confirmation hearings for a secretary of commerce nominee.
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