Birth of Maria Göppert Mayer

Maria Göppert Mayer was born on 28 June 1906 in Katowice. A German-born American theoretical physicist, Goeppert Mayer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for proposing the nuclear shell model, which explains why nuclei with certain numbers of protons or neutrons are especially stable. She shared the prize with Hans Jensen and Eugene Wigner. She studied at Gottingen under Max Born, and moved to the United States after marrying the chemist Joseph Mayer. For years she worked in universities without a paid position because of rules against hiring wives. She worked on the Manhattan Project and later at the University of California, San Diego, where she became a professor.

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