Science and repair: 100 years of Lise Meitner’s Contributions to the Auger Effect

One hundred years ago, the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner (1878–1968) discovered an effect, which is largely used nowadays for surfaces analysis and studies related to dissociation dynamics of isolated molecules, the Auger effect, studied in advanced undergraduate physics courses. In this article, we review some aspects of Lise Meitner’s story and the physics of the effect that still has the male scientist’s name, Pierre Auger (1899–1993), who independently discovered the same phenomenon around two years later. Like other researchers, we endorse the importance of renaming this effect and recognizing both scientists’ contributions.

Keywords:
Lise Meitner; Women in Science; Auger Effect; Radiation β