Maria Goeppert Mayer Research Paper

Maria Goeppert Mayer was born on June 18, 1906 in Katowice, Poland. Mayer has made numerous contributions to the field of physics. Not only was she the first person to investigate the phenomenon of double quantum emission and double beta decay; She was also the first person to work out the atomic properties of transuranic elements as well. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Heidelberg. Mayer received honorary degrees of Doctor of Science from Russel Sage College, Mount Holyoke College and Smith College. She was a professor of physics and a very accomplished physicist. She was also the first person to investigate the theoretical basis of nuclear pairing

Her father was a professor of pediatrics and the seventh generation of university scholars in his family. Because of her family's pedigree in education, it was highly expected that she acquire an education for herself. However, at first, Maria Goeppert Mayer did not intend to become the famed physicist she is today. She originally had the idea of becoming a mathematician in the spring of 1924 when she enrolled at the University at Göttingen. Göttingen was then a world center for physics (and the new study of quantum mechanics). Maria Goeppert had studied mathematics and science, preparing for a university education. She began by studying mathematics, but being exposed to the ideas of such people such as the great Niels Bohrs and Max Born, led Göppert to switch to physics for her choice of study. This switch led her to a great path and successful career in physics. She became a student of Max Born --- a physicist with a strong foundation in mathematics too. Maria was well-trained in the mathematical concepts that would be required to learn quantum mechanics. Even then, once reading her thesis, it was shown that she was highly influenced by James Franck's non-mathematical approach to physics. In 1930, she completely this thesis and received a

Goeppert Mayer taught at Sarah Lawrence College between 1941 and 1945, but she worked mainly at the S. A. M. Laboratory, on the separation of isotopes of uranium, with Harold Urey as director. She was also employed by the Argonne National Laboratory. In 1948 she started to work on the magic numbers, but it took her another year to find their explanation, and several years to work out most of the consequences. The fact that Haxel, Jensen and Suess, whom she had never met, gave the same explanation at the same time helped to convince her that it was right.. During her time at Chicago and Argonne, Maria developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells. She conducted inquiries about the elements sources and noticed the repetition of seven “magic numbers", with the help of Edward Teller. The numbers were 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. It was shown that elements with a “magic number” of protons or neutrons were consistently more stable than elements with other numbers of protons or neutrons. She proposed that in the inside the nucleus, protons and neutrons are arranged in a series of nucleon layers, like the layers of an onion, with neutrons and protons rotating around each other at each level. During the same time but working independently, German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen reached the same