Maria Goeppert Mayer and the Nuclear Waltz
pplpod10 Juni

Maria Goeppert Mayer and the Nuclear Waltz

In the fall of 1963, a San Diego newspaper announced the news in bold print: "S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Prize." What the headline failed to mention was that this mother had just decoded the structure of the atomic nucleus, and that she had spent the previous 30 years doing paradigm-shifting physics completely for free, because the American academic establishment refused to put her on the payroll. Maria Goeppert Mayer was only the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

This episode traces her path from Göttingen, the Silicon Valley of quantum mechanics, where a suffragette-run school sent battle-tested girls past an entrance exam most boys failed, through a 1931 doctoral thesis on two-photon absorption so far ahead of its time that the laser had to be invented to confirm it. It follows the decades of unpaid "volunteer" positions, the magic numbers she explained with a nuclear shell model, and the long-overdue professorship at UCSD that finally came three years before the prize.

  • The sixth-generation academic family and the father she called "more interesting, he was, after all, a scientist"
  • The suffragette school exam: all the girls passed, one of thirty boys did
  • A thesis ahead of its instruments: two-photon absorption and the unit now called the GM
  • Magic numbers and the quantum waltz: the shell model that won the Nobel from an unpaid desk
  • The legacy: an APS award for young women in physics, Mayer Hall, a postage stamp, and a crater on Venus

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(8442)

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa turned a bold sci-fi avatar concept into one of K-pop's defining acts of the 2020s. Built by SM Entertainment and debuting in November 2020 with Black Mamba, the group of Karina, Giselle, Winter...

2 Juli 19min

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette went from being dubbed the Debbie Gibson of Canada, a synth-pop teen who opened for Vanilla Ice, to the queen of alt-rock angst behind a single album that sold over 33 million copies...

2 Juli 21min

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

In late 2018, at the peak of her career, Ariana Grande's personal life shattered publicly. Rather than issue careful PR statements, she locked herself in a studio with friends and champagne and made a...

2 Juli 20min

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

At 14, Ariana Grande was laughed out of a Los Angeles boardroom for pitching a soulful R&B album. Years later she held the top three spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, a feat untouched sin...

2 Juli 20min

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks went from a teenager writing poems and listening to too much emo music to winning the Mercury Prize, touring with Billie Eilish, and co-writing for Beyonce. This deep dive traces her accele...

2 Juli 17min

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Expelled from a strict Catholic school for misfit behavior, a teenager taught herself guitar from YouTube and uploaded a song as a joke under a gibberish Instagram name. Years later she was opening fo...

2 Juli 20min

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

She wrote a Grammy-winning track for Eminem and Rihanna, penned K-pop hits, and shaped the sound of pop radio, yet could walk through a coffee shop unrecognized. This deep dive into Bebe Rexha examine...

2 Juli 17min

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

When Beyonce performed a country song at the 2016 CMA Awards, the response was to scrub the evidence and reject the song as not country enough. This deep dive into her 2024 landmark album Cowboy Carte...

2 Juli 17min

Populärt inom Nöje

mellan-himmel-och-jord-med-jlc
filip-fredrik-svarar
badfluence
mardromsgasten
dialogiskt
rss-p3-musikdokumentar
chilla-med-de-vet-du
fem-i-topp
hemma-hos-strage
skandal
mannen-utan-spar
schulman-show
karatefylla
gott-snack-med-fredrik-soderholm
podme-bio-4
alex-room-service-en-podcast-om-kiss
sexet
skalla-dagen-med-mia-skaringer
vardagsmysterier
rss-made-in-sverige-podcast