Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner worked with Otto Hahn for three decades, and after fleeing Nazi Germany she and her nephew Otto Frisch provided the physical explanation of nuclear fission in early 1939, based on Hahn's experimental results. Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel prize in chemistry. Recognition followed later, including the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966 and the element meitnerium, named in 1997.