Reviews

3.5 stars.

The story of Lise Meitner is one of absolute interest and highly encouraged. What an incredibly interesting woman and life story. A Physicist ahead of her time, a pioneer of a woman in STEM, and a strong Jewish woman. Like many biographies, it is chronological and easily understandably. There are many names of other scientists, some of them known and some I learned along the way.

Much like the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this story is important and lovely. Yet, this book is not written with any finesse. Quite simple and straight forward. And sometimes a bit irritating as there should be more depth to the author's writing. But all in all, a short but lovely read!

shighley's review

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4.0

This book was exhaustive... and exhausting. I appreciate the painstaking research that Moss completed (and I enjoyed talking to her at a conference). While denoted as YA, I am not sure if students would pick it up other than for a research assignment. I was very curious about Meitner, but it did take a bit to get through the book. The generous back matter with a timeline, glossary, endnotes, scientist profiles, and more were very useful. There were just so many names to keep straight!
My overall impression is one of disgust that Meitner did not get as much credit as she deserved; I happened to look up Hahn's Wikipedia entry and was so disappointed to see how many accolades he received, then was surprised that Moss cited that as well. I wonder if it will ever be fixed.