Maria Goeppert-Mayer revolutionized nuclear physics—without pay, for decades. Denied faculty positions because she was a woman, she worked as a volunteer at Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Chicago, publishing groundbreaking research while universities ignored her. In 1949, she solved the nuclear shell model, explaining why certain atomic nuclei are stable. Only at 54 did she finally secure a paid professorship. In 1963, she became the second woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Maria prove

For most of her career, Maria Goeppert Mayer worked “just for the fun of doing physics,” without pay or status or a tenured position. She was 58 before she became a full professor. And yet she made major contributions to the growing understanding of nuclear physics, including the revelatory nuclear shell model. Discover her story in our new storytelling experience: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/maria-goeppert-mayer | Nobel Prize

As the only child of a sixth-generation academic, Maria Goeppert Mayer was expected to go to university. “My father said, ‘Don’t grow up to be a woman,’ and what he meant by that was, a housewife.” But in Göttingen, Germany, in the early 1900s, girls didn’t have many educational options. The one school for girls closed a year before Goeppert Mayer was due to graduate. She took the university entrance exam anyway – and passed – along with just four other girls. When she enrolled in university in