Maria Goeppert-MayerMaria Goeppert-Mayer was a famous physicist of the early 1900s. She was born on June 28, 1906 in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia (today called Katowice, Poland ). Maria was the only daughter of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria Nee Wolff. In 1910, when Maria was four years old, her father moved to Göttingen where Maria stayed and spent most of her life until her marriage. Maria Forst initially attended public schools in Göttingen, but thanks to her intelligence she was also able to attend private schools. After receiving her baccalaureate in 1924 from her private school, Maria was admitted to the University of Göttingen, with the decision to be a mathematician. In addition to going to Cambridge, England, where she stayed for a term to learn English, most of her education was acquired in Göttingen. Shortly after deciding on her career choice, she decided that mathematics wasn't for her, and that's when she discovered that she really loved physics. Max Born (who was also a famous physicist) was one of her close friends who helped her with her scientific education. Maria Geoppert-Mayer married Joseph Edward Mayer in 1930. After their marriage, she followed him to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where she taught physics. Since most universities at the time would not consider hiring a professor's wife, Maria worked for free but did not complain about her love of physics. Karlz F. Herzfeld (who was also a famous physics professor at Johns Hopkins University) was very interested in Maria's work and helped and influenced her development into chemical physics. She wrote numerous articles with Karlz F. Herzfeld and her husband on her new physics concern, the color of organic molecules. After receiving her doctorate, they moved to Columbia in 1936 where she taught for a year at Sarah Lawrence College, but continued to work primarily. at the SAM laboratory directed by Harold Urey. After staying there for ten years in 1946, they moved to Chicago, which was the first place where she was finally treated with open arms. Maria immediately became a professor at the physics department and the Institute for Nuclear Studies. She was also employed by the Argonne National Laboratory with very little knowledge of nuclear physics. In 1948, Maria began working on magic numbers, but it took her another year to find their explanation, and many years to understand most of their consequences...