About

Presented by Professor Michael Wiescher, University of Notre Dame

Date: 6 March 2026
Time: 5PM - 6:30PM GMT

This lecture will present an overview of Maria Goeppert-Mayer’s life and her accomplishments in physics. Being trained in quantum theory at the famous Göttingen school of Max Born, she became friends with many of the most influential physicists of the early 20th century. Albeit as a woman and the wife of Joseph Mayer, she was considered unemployable in the United States after her emigration from Germany. Nevertheless, she continued working as an unpaid lecturer and made several substantial contributions to atomic and molecular physics. Collaborating with Edward Teller during World War II she shifted her focus to nuclear physics. Finally employed at Argonne National Laboratory, her research on the correlation between stellar abundances and the numbers of protons or neutrons in a nucleus led her to the identification of magic numbers. Despite being dismissed by many physicists, her exploration into "numerology" ultimately led to the recognition of the shell structure of the nucleus. In 1963 three years after her appointment as full Professor at the University of California, San Diego, she was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics for her groundbreaking discovery.

Organised by the IOP History of Physics Group