Artificial radioactive element properties unknown	memory peg
	1982 Gottfried Münzenberg, Peter Armbruster and co-workers, Darmstadt, Germany
	Lise Meitner (1878-1968)

First prepared in 1982 by Gottfried Münzenberg, Peter Armbruster, Fritz Peter Heßberger, Sigurd Hofmann, Klaus Poppensieker, Willibrord Reisdorf, K. Schneider, Karl-Heinz Schmidt, Christoph-Clemens Sahm, and Detlef Vermeulen at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.

The systematic IUPAC name was Unnilenium (Une). The name and symbol Meitnerium (Mt) was suggested by the discovers, and accepted by the nomenclature committee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), and ratified by the IUPAC Council meeting in Geneva during August 1997 (see "Naming the transfermium elements" on the Mendelevium page).

Named after Lise Meitner (Vienna 1878-Cambridge 1968), Austrian physicist, the first to realize that Otto Hahn had inadvertedly achieved the fission of uranium. Together with Hahn she discovered the element Protactinium and studied the effects of neutron bombardment on uranium. Driven from Nazi Germany because of het Jewish origin, she later worked in Sweden. She refused to work on the atomic bomb.

Biography Lise Meitner online.

Further reading:

• Glenn T. Seaborg, Transuranium elements: A Half Century. Remarks at ACS Symposium to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Transuranium Elements, Washington D.C., August 27, 1990. (PDF-file available on-line).