ÜBer Die B- Und G-Strahlen Der Transurane. (Mit 1 Abbildung.) Offprint From: Annalen Der Physik. 5. Folge. Bd. 29. Heft 3-4. Meitner, Lise.

First edition, offprint issue, of the Austrian physicist's paper examining the energies of various types of beta decay in the three possible transformation series of uranium, with reference to experiments undertaken using a Wilson cloud chamber. It is part of a long series of experimental work which culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission in late 1938. During the 1930s, Meitner (1878-1968) worked with the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann to isolate and identify the transuranium elements that they believed were created through neutron bombardment of uranium. "In 1934, intrigued by Enrico Fermi's experiments indicating that transuranic elements were produced by the neutron irradiation of uranium, Meitner recruited Hahn, and later Strassmann, for the investigation that resulted in the discovery of nuclear fission. Meitner was the team's leader, interpreting the data from chemistry, radiochemistry, and her own physical measurements into the context of nuclear physics" (Dictionary of Women in Science). After the Second World War broke out, Meitner (of Jewish origin) fled Germany for Stockholm. Her forced emigration "shattered her career and clouded her scientific reputation. Five months after she left Berlin, the remaining members of her team announced the splitting of the uranium nucleus, a discovery in which she should have fully shared. Although Meitner and her nephew, the physicist Otto Frisch, gave the first theoretical interpretation for the process (and named it fission), the 1944 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Hahn alone" (ibid.). This paper is printed in a journal which Meitner "otherwise did not use - the 'Annalen der Physik'. It is nearly certain that the reason was the 60th birthday of Eduard Grüneisen, who had worked alongside Max Planck as the editor of the annals since 1929, and the double-issue in question was dedicated to him. Meitner had been friends with the Grüneisen family since her early years in Berlin" (Kant, A100). Horst Kant, "Lise Meitner and the (supposed) transuranic elements", Annalen der Physik, vol. 524, no. 6-7, 2012. Octavo, pp. 246-50. Original printed wrappers, folded as issued. With 4 cloud chamber photographic illustrations. "Kern" ("nucleus") pencilled on front cover, two neat ink corrections to equation on first page. Faintly toned, lightly creased along top edge of covers: a near-fine copy.