James Philip Elliott. 27 July 1929—21 October 2008

James Philip Elliott made important contributions to improve our understanding of the structure of atomic nuclei in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1958 he proposed the SU(3) model, explaining rotational behaviour of nuclei in the context of the shell model. His idea, based on elegant and seminal group-theoretical concepts, reconciled the independent-particle with the liquid-drop model, which until then existed as disconnected views of the nucleus. In the 1960s and 1970s he developed methods to extract properties of the nuclear interaction from the phase shifts of nucleon–nucleon scattering. From 1980 until his death he contributed to the development of the interacting boson model of Arima and Iachello, and its microscopic understanding in terms of symmetries of the shell model. For his outstanding achievements in theoretical physics, in 2002 he and Francesco Iachello were awarded the Lise Meitner prize of the European Physical Society for ‘their innovative applications of group-theoretical methods to the understanding of atomic nuclei’. His achievements were also recognized by the award of the Rutherford Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1994.

HISTÓRIA DA QUÍMICA COMO CAMINHO PARA DISCUSSÃO DA MULHER NA CIÊNCIA / HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY AS A WAY FOR DISCUSSION OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE

O trabalho aqui desenvolvido tem como objetivo investigar as ideias dos alunos a respeito de cientistas e como relacionam a mulher com a ciência. A História da Química no Ensino foi destacada a partir do episódio histórico referente à cientista Lise Meitner e toda sua trajetória envolvendo a fissão nuclear. A investigação foi feita com uma turma de primeiro ano do Ensino Médio de uma escola particular do município de Barra Mansa (RJ). Concluímos que as alunas e os alunos investigados tinham uma visão distorcida dos cientistas, com ideia de uma ciência masculinizada. Mas a problematização do episódio histórico de Lise Meitner e a descoberta da fissão nuclear proporcionaram uma reflexão inicial dos estereótipos apresentados pelos estudantes.

Lise Meitner, β-decay and non-radiative electromagnetic transitions

The current activities in detecting neutrinos as carriers of information from far out in our Universe prompt us to look back on the research activities a century ago that led to the discovery of these weakly interacting particles. One of the leading researchers was Lise Meitner, who observed electrons with well-defined energy, besides the continuous energy spectrum emitted in β decay. These electron lines are well understood as radiationless nuclear transitions competing with γ-ray emission. It is proposed to name the electrons resulting out of this so-called internal conversion process after Lise Meitner and Charles D. Ellis. The equivalent process within the electronic (atomic) shell is the Auger effect , competing with X-ray emission. In this context, the radioactive decay of UX1 or 234 Th, well studied a century ago by Lise Meitner and Charles Ellis, is re-visited, and the mono-energetic electrons are ascribed entirely to the internal conversion process.

The Discovery of Nuclear Fission

When a Nobel Prize was awarded in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission, Lise Meitner should have been among the winners. Despite the importance of her contribution, Meitner’s work was not properly recognized for decades. In this essay, Jeremy Bernstein tells Meitner’s life story and accomplishments, after her flight from Germany and as she worked among the great physicists of the era.