Lise Meitner was born in Vienna, Austria on November 7, 1878. She was the third child of eight children in the family. Her father Philipp, who was a lawyer, hired personal teachers to teach the children, and she learned mathematics very well. Music was important to the family, and all the children learned to play the piano. The Meitner children were taught to listen to their parents, but to think for themselves.

When Lise Meitner finished school at the age of 14, she could not go to college for higher education, as were all girls in Austria. But, inspired by the discovery of Henri Becquerel, she was determined to study radioactivity (放射性).

When she turned 21, women were finally allowed into Austrian universities. Meitner was admitted into the University of Vienna; there she was excellent at math and physics and earned her doctor’s degree in 1906. She wrote to Marie Curie, but there was no room for her in the Paris lab, so Meitner made her way to Berlin. There she worked with Otto Hahn, but as an Austrian Jewish woman, she was excluded from the main labs and allowed to work only in the basement.

In 1912, the pair moved to a new university and Meitner had better lab equipment. Though Meitner was forced to escape Nazi Germany in 1938, they continued to co­work. Meitner continued her work in Sweden and later they found the phenomenon “nuclear fission (核裂变)”. The discovery, which finally led to the atomic bomb, won Hahn the Nobel Prize in 1944. Meitner, ignored by the Nobel committee (委员会), refused to return to Germany after the war and continued her atomic research in Stockholm into her 80s.

【小题1】What do we know about Lise Meitner’s childhood?

A．She received a good education.

B．She often went against her parents.

C．She showed a great talent for music.

D．She lived a hard life with her family.

【小题2】Why didn’t Lise Meitner go to college after finishing high school?

A．She wasn’t interested in college.

B．Girls in her country were not allowed.

C．Her family couldn’t afford the school fees.

D．She wanted to study radioactivity by herself.

【小题3】What did Lise Meitner probably realize when working in Berlin?

A．She was unfairly treated there.

B．She made the wrong college choice.

C．She should have kept her identity a secret.

D．She should find a better partner than Otto Hahn.

【小题4】What was most probably Lise Meitner’s attitude toward the Nobel committee?

A．Indifferent.	B．Unclear.
C．Angry.	D．Supportive.