The Nobel Prize in Physics 1963
Awarded on: 1963-11-05
"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"
Affiliations:
- University of California – San Diego, CA, USA
Maria Goeppert Mayer
Born: 1906-06-28 in Kattowitz, Germany (now Katowice, Poland)
Gender: female
Field: German-American atomic and nuclear physicist (1906–1972)
Biography
Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-American atomic and nuclear physicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner. One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Goeppert Mayer and Jensen for their model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, the first being Marie Curie in 1903. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.