German-American physicist.
Name variations: Maria or Marie Goeppert-Mayer; Göppert, Geoppart, or Geoppert. Pronunciation: GER-pert MAY-er. Born Maria Gertrud Käte Göppert, June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia (now Katowice, Poland); died in San Diego, California, Feb 20, 1972, of a pulmonary embolism; dau. of Friedrich Göppert (pediatrician and professor of medicine at Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen) and Maria Wolff Göppert (schoolteacher and musician); Georgia Augusta University, PhD, 1930; m. Joseph Edward Mayer, Jan 18, 1930; children: MariaAnne Mayer (b. 1933); Peter Conrad Mayer (b. 1938)Was the 1st woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics (1963), for her explanation of the nuclear shell model theory; sailed for US (1931); became a naturalized citizen (1933); worked as volunteer associate at Johns HopkinsUniversity (1931—39); despite attitudes against hiring women, was lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University (1939 45); was a research physicist for Substitute Alloy Materials Project (1942 45); served as senior physicist for Institute for Nuclear Studies and Argonne National Laboratory at the University of Chicago (1945-59); published theory of nuclear shell model in Physical Review (1948); co-wrote Statistical Mechanics (1940) and Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure (1955); was the 5th woman elected to National Academy of Sciences (1956); named professor and given salary at University of California at San Diego (1959—72); became 1st woman to win the Nobel Prize for theoretical physics when she was awarded the honor along with Hans Jensen and Eugene P. Wigner for their research on the structure of atomic nucleia (1963); overcame the obstacles of being a woman in the world of theoretical science and a German immigrant in the US in 1930s to rise to the top of her field.
