Human Intelligence
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- Episode
- Manhattan Project: Lise Meitner
- Broadcast Info
- 2025 (14 mins)
- Description
- Lise Meitner was a world-class physicist, who saw what others could not. She recognised nuclear fission - the splitting of the atom, the powerful energy released - before anyone else. Naomi Alderman finds out how. Women weren’t even allowed to attend lectures at the University of Berlin, when Meitner moved there in 1907. She began her career in a basement workshop, kept away from male students, and went on to build an unimpeachable reputation for scientific precision and brilliance. Her discovery of fission made the atom bomb possible, but she refused to have anything to do with the Manhattan Project.
- Genre
- History
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Human Intelligence". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/252613 (Accessed 28 Mar 2026)