On November 5th, 1963, newspapers littered the front porches and lawns of just about every house in San Diego, just as they always did. But on that morning, as sprinklers rained water down upon lawns and birds chirped peacefully over the backdrop of the rising morning sun, the papers tucked in the delivery boy’s bicycle basket noted something spectacular. A woman had just won the Nobel Prize in Physics—a feat that had not been witnessed by the world for six long decades. However, as the paper delivery boy chugged along, chiming his bell for all to hear, the accomplishment detailed on the front page seemed to fall upon deaf ears. As Californians enjoyed their coffee hot at the breakfast table, they skimmed right over the front page of The San Diego Tribune, whose headline ever-so-tastefully read: “S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Physics Prize”. [1] Underneath the headline was a picture, and a name that hardly anyone in the United States recognized—Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Quick-scanning eyes could catch glimpses into the life of this Nobel Prize winner, described curtly as “red haired” and a “mother of two”.[2] Little did those Californians know; that red-haired mother of two had changed the face of science—and, despite her newspaper title, turned out to be much more than just a mother.
A Girl Raised Not to be a Woman
Maria Goeppert was born to two German parents of prestigious status; she came from a long line of professorship on her father’s side, and as she was the only child of her mother and father, she was expected to follow in the footsteps of her family’s legacy.[3] Her father, a pediatrician and professor, frequently encouraged her from birth not to “grow up to be a woman”, as in, a housewife.[4] Goeppert’s relationship to her father was strong, and they were quite close; their mutual interest in science was the solid foundational block of their bond, and she had expressed a great fondness for her father over her mother—as he was “after all a scientist”.[5] His belief in her abilities and his desire for her to transcend the expectations of women at that time greatly influenced the course of the rest of her life—as she had decided that she would, indeed, grow up to be great.[6]
It would be the status of her father, as well as her privileged upbringing, as it turned out, that would assist her in overcoming the difficulties that many women faced in pursuit of an education. In Göttingen, Germany, the place in which she spent a great deal of her life, the education opportunities for women were sparse.[7] She was interested in mathematics from a very young age, however, there was no schooling available to her to nurture this interest.[8] Therefore, she was quickly moved from public school to a private school specifically designed to prepare girls for college admission.[9] Despite the school closing before her four-year program was completed, Goeppert took the college admission exam and passed, along with only four other girls from her class.[10] She was accepted to Georgia Augusta University, known as simply “Göttingen”, the most prestigious of universities in Germany, in which her father worked as a professor.[11]
The prestige of Göttingen attracted many of the “heavy-hitters” of physics and mathematics of the time; famous scientists and mathematicians such as Max Born, James Franck, Richard Courant, Hermann Weyl, amongst many others came to teach at the school.[12] Goeppert was surrounded by the very best in their respective fields, many of which were noted as being not only her teachers, but also close friends of her father and family.[13] Once again, Goeppert’s prestigious name had given her possibilities that hardly any other woman her age could fathom, and she wasted no time in taking complete advantage of these opportunities.
Joseph Mayer’s Wife
In 1930, Goeppert completed her doctoral thesis and earned her PhD in physics.[14] Soon after earning her degree, she met Joseph Mayer, who was quick in asking for her hand in marriage.[15] The pair moved to Baltimore, Maryland after marrying, as Joseph had accepted a job at Johns Hopkins University as a professor of chemistry.[16] The privilege that Goeppert had taken advantage of in Germany was something that Goeppert-Mayer of America did not have the luxury of experiencing. Her life was vastly different in the States; she had quickly gone from a genius of a woman to simply the wife of a genius man. She was barred from receiving a job in academia for two reasons—firstly, it was the height of the Great Depression, and jobs were scarce; secondly, rules against nepotism prevented her from having a paying job as at any of the universities that her husband worked at.[17] Despite her qualifications, Goeppert-Mayer was barred from anything greater than volunteer positions doing minor research for universities that benefited from her work without having to compensate her for her work.[18] For nearly thirty years, she followed her husband from university to university, working and researching without compensation.[19]
It was clear that in America, she was a woman and a wife first, a scientist second. Nevertheless, Goeppert-Mayer never gave up on science, and she brushed off this chip on her shoulder by stating that she was simply working “just for the fun of physics”.[20] She had no care for compensation, nor did she care if any man respected her or not—she was going to press on and do her work for physics’ sake; nothing was going to stop her.
Physics: The Male Science
Despite the male dominance of the field of physics, Goeppert-Mayer made a lasting impact with her work. In September of 1943, she had been acting as an interim professor at Sarah Lawrence College when she was recruited to begin contributing to the Manhattan Project, the famous American wartime project dedicated to the development of the atomic bomb.[21] She began working for the Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University, researching and experimenting with variations of the element uranium.[22] After working briefly with the SAM Laboratories, she was moved to another project in 1944, working under Edward Teller, who is known as the Father of the H-bomb.[23] She began to work on calculations that were relevant to the development of the H-bomb, known as the “Opacity Project”.[24] She was the head of a team of mathematicians and researchers that worked on the project, and the calculations that her team worked on were later used in the creating of the H-bomb.[25] Funnily enough, however, though she played such a crucial part in its construction, her name is seldom mentioned in relation to the creation or development of the Hydrogen bomb. Additionally, despite her crucial contributions to both the Manhattan Project and the Opacity Project, Goeppert-Mayer still struggled to find a paying position as a professor and continued to work for universities without compensation.[26]
It wasn’t until 1946 that Goeppert-Mayer would finally begin to embark on the journey to get the recognition and credit that she truly deserved. She had been offered a part-time job as the senior physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, and it was in this position that she began working on the research that would earn her the Nobel Prize in Physics.[27] At this laboratory, she was working alongside the aforementioned Edward Teller, attempting to discover the origins of elements.[28] During this research, Goeppert-Mayer began to notice patterns in the elements that she was working with. She noticed that elements that had a nucleus containing 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, or 126 protons (a particle with a positive charge) or neutrons (a particle with a neutral charge) maintained a sense of stability, as opposed to other elements.[29] The discovery of these patterns led her to begin side research on these elements, and she developed what is now called the “Nuclear Shell Model”, a model of the atom which suggests that several shell-like structures exist on the outside of atomic nuclei, on which particles orbit.[30] As it turned out, a German physicist named J. Hans D. Jensen had come to a similar realization, and they began working together on the model in 1951.[31] Their collaboration on the model came to a positive end in 1955, when the two scientists co-published a book on their findings called Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structures.[32] Roughly a decade after her discovery, in 1960, she was finally offered a full-time job as a professor at the University of California at San Diego.[33] Shortly after her arrival in California, she suffered a stroke—but that was not going to stop her; not after she had just gotten her dream job.[34] She persisted and taught physics. But this job was just the beginning of her parade of success.
Her work finally paid off in 1963, when she would win the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside her research partner, Jensen.[35] Though the pair were only awarded half of the prize, she was still just the second woman to have won the prize—60 years after the famous Marie Curie.[36] As of 2024, Goepper-Mayer is only one of four women to have ever won the prize; the next woman would not be awarded the prize until over 50 years after Goeppert-Mayer.[37] An extremely strong and persistent woman, her message to young women was this: “Become fully educated women and promote the understanding of science in any way you can. Our country needs your help. My generation has played its part. It is up to you to carry on.”[38] Her dedication to education and science was apparent to anyone that met her, and she would not lose that passion as long as she lived.
The Woman, the Physicist, the Legend
No blockbuster movies celebrate her name the way they might celebrate her male counterparts—considering her contributions, it truly is a wonder that neither she, nor any other woman involved in the Manhattan Project, was mentioned anywhere in the groundbreaking, award-winning 2023 Nolan film Oppenheimer. Why? Has Dr. Maria Goeppert-Mayer’s gender somehow overshadowed the groundbreaking work she has done? Like so many women before her, and many women after her, she has been doomed to slip through the cracks of the American public. The world of physics may know her name, but it is a disservice that seldom anyone outside of the trade knows the woman that so deeply affected the fundamentals of science.
Dr. Maria-Goeppert Mayer died of heart failure on February 20, 1972.[39] But let it be known: her heart never failed her. Her love of science and mathematics triumphed over any disadvantage she may have ever had, and despite the hardships she experienced as a woman, her memory as a physicist will live on forever. She is a role model for physicists, scientists, mathematicians, and women everywhere. In her lifetime, she did not only prove that the atom has a shell-shaped model, but also that when there is a will, there is a way, and all women can and must find their way. So, say her name. Tell her story. For the women of the past, and all of the women of the future, share the stories, the anecdotes, the quotes, the research of all of the women hidden in the towering shadows of the men that worked by their sides.
References
“August 1948: Maria Goeppert Mayer and the Nuclear Shell Model.” n.d. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200808/physicshistory.cfm.
Hamblin, Abby. 2018. “Last Woman to Win Nobel Prize in Physics Referred to as ‘San Diego Mother’ in News Coverage – the San Diego Union-Tribune.” San Diego Union-Tribune, October 3, 2018. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/sd-woman-win-nobel-prize-physics-20181002-htmlstory.html.
Los Alamos National Laboratory. n.d. “The Los Alamos Connection to Maria Goeppert Mayer’s Nobel Legacy.” https://discover.lanl.gov/news/0319-maria-goeppert-mayer/.
“Nobel Prize Awarded Women.” n.d. NobelPrize.Org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-women/.
Sachs, Robert G. and National Academy of Sciences. 1979. Maria Goeppert Mayer. https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/mayer-maria.pdf.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2024. “Maria Goeppert Mayer | Biography, Career & Nuclear Shell Model Proposal.” Encyclopedia Britannica. March 26, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Goeppert-Mayer.
“The Nobel Prize | Women Who Changed Science | Maria Goeppert Mayer.” n.d. https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/maria-goeppert-mayer.
“University of California: In Memoriam, July 1975.” n.d. http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb9t1nb5rm;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00039&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=oac4.