MARIA GOEPPERT MAYER
Work during World War II
At Columbia University, where Joseph Mayer had been appointed to an
associate professorship in chemistry, Maria Mayer's position at first was even
more tenuous than at Johns Hopkins. The chairman of the Physics Department,
George Pegram, arranged for an office for her, but she had no appointment.
This was the beginning of a close relationship between the Mayers and the
Harold Ureys, a relationship which was to continue throughout her life, as they
always seemed to turn up in the same places in later years. Willard Libby
became a good friend, and it was at Columbia that she first began to come
under the influence of Enrico Fermi, although she had already met him in her
first summer in the United States (1930) at the University of Michigan Special
Summer Session in Physics. The Mayers also saw much of I. I. Rabi and Jerrold
Zacharias during their years at Columbia.
She quickly put to work her talent for problem solving when Fermi suggested
that she attempt to predict the valence-shell structure of the yet-to-be-
discovered transuranium elements. By making use of the very simple Fermi-
Thomas model of the electronic structure of the atom, she came to the
conclusion that these elements would form a new chemical rare-earth series. In
spite of the oversimplifications of the particular model, this subsequently turned
out to be a remarkably accurate prediction of their qualitative chemical
behavior.
In December 1941, she was offered her first real position:half-time job teaching
science at Sarah Lawrence College, and she organized and presented a unified
science course, which was developed as she went along during that first
presentation. She continued, on an occasional basis, to teach part time at Sarah
Lawrence throughout the war.
She was offered a second job opportunity in the spring of 1942 by Harold
Urey,who was building up a research group devoted to separating U 235 from
natural uranium as part of the work toward the atomic bomb. This ultimately
became known as Columbia University's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM)
Project. She accepted this second half-time job, which gave her an opportunity
to use her knowledge of chemical physics. Her work included research on the
thermodynamic properties of uranium hexafluoride and on the theory of
separating isotopes by photochemical reactions, a process that, however, did not
develop into a practical possibility at that time (The much later invention of the
laser has reopened that possibility.)
Edward Teller arranged for her to participate in a program at Columbia
referred to as the Opacity Project, which concerned the properties of matter and
radiation at extremely high temperatures and had a bearing on the development
of the thermonuclear weapon. Later, in the spring of 1945, she was invited to
spend some months at Los Alamos, where she had the opportunity to work
closely with Teller, whom she considered to be one of the world's most
stimulating collaborators.
In February of 1946, the Mayers moved to Chicago where Joe had been
appointed Professor in both the Chemistry Department and the newly formed
Institute for Nuclear Studies of The University of Chicago. At the time, the
University's nepotism rules did not permit the hiring of both husband and wife
in faculty positions, but Maria became a voluntary Associate Professor of
Physics in the Institute, a position which gave her the opportunity to participate
fully in activities at the University.
Teller had also accepted an appointment at The University of Chicago, and he
moved the Opacity Project there, giving Maria Mayer the opportunity to
continue with this work. It was accommodated in the postwar residuum of the
Metallurgical Laboratory of the University where, in its heyday during the war,
the initial work on the nuclear chain reaction had been carried out. She was
hired as a consultant to the Metallurgical Laboratory so that she could continue
her participation in this project, and several students from Columbia who had
become graduate students at Chicago worked under her guidance.
The Metallurgical Laboratory went out of existence to make way for
establishing Argonne National Laboratory on July 1, 1946, under the aegis of
the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission. She was offered and was
pleased to accept a regular appointment as Senior Physicist (half time) in the
Theoretical Physics Division of the newly formed laboratory. The main interest
at Argonne was nuclear physics, a field in which she had had little experience,
and so she gladly accepted the opportunity to learn what she could about the
subject. She continued to hold this part-time appointment throughout her years
in Chicago, while maintaining her voluntary appointment at the University.
The Argonne appointment was the source of financial support for her work
during this very productive period of her life, a period in which she made her
major contribution to the field of nuclear physics, the nuclear shell model,
which earned her the Nobel Prize.
Since the mission of Argonne National Laboratory at the time was, in addition
to research in basic science, the development of peaceful uses of nuclear power,
she also became involved in applied work there. She was the first person to
undertake the solution by electronic computer of the criticality problem for a
liquid metal breeder reactor. She programmed this calculation (using the Monte
Carlo method) for ENIAC, the first electronic computer, which was located at
the Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground. A summary of
this work was published in 1951 (U.S. Department of Commerce, Applied
Mathematics, Series 12:19-20).
While carrying on her work at Argonne, she continued her voluntary role at
The University of Chicago by lecturing toe classes, serving on committees,
directing thesis students, anal participating in the activities at the Institute for
Nuclear Studies (now known as the Enrico Fermi Institute). The University
had. pulled together in this Institute a stellar assembly of physicists and
chemists, including Fermi, Frey, and Libby, as well as Teller and the Layers.
Greg or Wentzel joined the faculties of the Physics Department and Institute
later, and the families quickly became very close, one outcome being the
joining of the families by marriage of Maria Ann to the Wentzels' son.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who had been on the faculty of the Astronomy
Department for many years, also joined the Institute. A stream of young and
very bright physical scientists poured into the Institute, and the atmosphere was
stimulating to the extreme. To add to this exciting atmosphere, which in some
ways must have been reminiscent of Goettingen in the early days, her former
teacher and friend, James Franck, was already a member of the University's
Chemistry Department. |
The activities in the Institute reflected the interests of the leading lights,
interests that were very broad indeed, ranging from nuclear physics and
chemistry to astrophysics and from cosmology to geophysics. The
interdisciplinary character of the Institute was well suited to the breadth of her
own activities over the past, so that her Chicago years were the culmination of
her variety of scientific experience. In keeping with this, she turned her
attention at first to completing and publishing some earlier work in chemical
physics, including work with Jacob Bigeleisen on isotopic exchange reactions.
Bigeleisen had collaborated with her in other work at Columbia University and
at this time was a fellow of the Institute. At the same time, she began to give
attention to nuclear physics.