Maria Goeppert Mayer

Also known as Maria Göppert, Maria Göppert-Mayer, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Maria Mayer, Maria G. Mayer, Maria Gertrude Goeppert Mayer

German-born American theoretical physicist (1906-1972)

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Maria Goeppert Mayer was a physicist who lived from 1906 to 1972. She was awarded one Nobel Prize. Her work is recognized in the Nobel Laureates collection, the Nobel Physics collection, and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection.

Mayer had an Erdős number of 4.

Synthesized by Vinony from 8 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics1963
“for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”
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Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Family name: Mayer
Gender: female
Citizenship: United States
Place of birth: Katowice
Place of death: San Diego
Spouse: Joseph Edward Mayer
Father: Friedrich Göppert
Occupation: scientist
Educated at: University of Göttingen
Employer: Argonne National Laboratory
Languages spoken: English language
Notable work: nuclear shell model
Participant in: Manhattan Project
Doctoral advisor: Max Born
Student of: Max Born
Field of work: statistical mechanics
Image: Maria Goeppert-Mayer.jpg
Work location: San Diego

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maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
Commons category: Maria Goeppert-Mayer
cause of death: circulatory collapse
date of birth: 1906-01-01
date of death: 1972-01-01
nominated for: Nobel Prize in Physics
member of: National Academy of Sciences
Erdős number: 4
influenced by: Max Born
described at URL: www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/28323-1
name in native language: Maria Göppert-Mayer
married name: Maria G. Mayer
manner of death: natural causes
interested in: physics
birth name: Maria Göppert

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Encyclopedic overview

Maria Goeppert Mayer ( German: [maˈʁiːa ˈɡœpɐt ˈmaɪɐ] ; née Göppert; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German–American theoretical 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 discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." She was the second woman to win the 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.

A graduate of the University of Göttingen, Goeppert Mayer wrote her doctoral thesis on the theory of possible two-photon absorption by atoms. At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the laser in the 1960s later permitted this. Today, the unit for the two-photon absorption cross section is called the Goeppert Mayer (GM) unit.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Maria Goeppert Mayer” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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Maria Goeppert Mayer