Maria Goeppert Mayer

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-American theoretical physicist who developed the nuclear shell model and shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Atomic nucleus: The compact central region of an atom, composed of protons and neutrons. The shell model explains how protons and neutrons arrange themselves inside this core.
University of Göttingen: A German university that became a major center of mathematics and theoretical physics. Mayer studied physics there amid the intellectual community that shaped her early career.
Joseph Edward Mayer: An American physical chemist whose research focused on statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. Her husband and close collaborator, he shared her appointments and research communities.
1963 Nobel Prize in Physics: The physics Nobel awarded jointly to Eugene Wigner, Maria Goeppert Mayer, and J. Hans D. Jensen. The prize recognized Mayer and Jensen for discoveries concerning the nuclear shell structure.
Nuclear shell model: A model that describes protons and neutrons occupying quantized energy levels within an atomic nucleus. This is the theory Mayer developed to explain nuclear structure and stability.
Max Born: A German physicist whose work helped establish quantum mechanics and whose Göttingen institute trained many theorists. Born supervised Mayer's doctoral work and remained a major intellectual influence.
J. Hans D. Jensen: A German theoretical physicist who independently developed a nuclear shell model. Mayer and Jensen independently reached closely related shell-model explanations and shared the 1963 Nobel Prize.
Nuclear physics: The branch of physics that studies atomic nuclei, their constituents, and their interactions. The shell model became a central framework for interpreting nuclear properties.
Nuclear magic number: A number of protons or neutrons that completes a nuclear shell and confers unusual stability. Magic numbers were the unexplained pattern that the shell model accounted for.
Johns Hopkins University: A research university in Baltimore, Maryland, founded in 1876. Mayer moved to Baltimore after marrying Joseph Mayer, but gender barriers blocked a regular faculty appointment.

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