Abstract
 
  The discovery and application of the nuclear shell model, 
for which Maria Goeppert Mayer received the Nobel Prize in 1963, 
together with Jensen, was one of the most important developments 
in nuclear physics. It is not so well known that Maria Goeppert Mayer 
was an accomplished physicist even from the beginning of  her career.
She and Joseph Mayer, her husband, coauthored a book on
Statistical Mechanics, which was the standard textbook in the subject
when I was a student at the University of Chicago. Her discovery of 
the nuclear shell model was rather unexpected. In fact, from what was 
known about the nuclear forces at the time, it was expected that the 
nucleus would behave more like a liquid drop than a quasi-atomic 
system with independent particle motion. The name "Magic Numbers"
 was coined by Wigner, (who shared the Nobel Prize with 
Mayer and Jensen for pioneering work in nuclear theory), as he was 
somewhat skeptical about the shell model, until the evidence for it 
became convincing. The name stuck, however, and, indeed, it  may be
quite appropriate as an indication of  Maria Mayer's great intuitive 
powers. The story is not over yet. To this day, the origin of the strong 
spin-orbit coupling and of nuclear pairing are partially, but not 
entirely, understood.
 
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