Maria Goeppert-Mayer (Goeppert)

Maria Goeppert was born in Poland, in 1906. In 1930, she emigrated to the USA and taught at Johns Hopkins University, and from 1960 she held a chair at the University of California.

One of her greatest accomplishments was the development of the shell model of the nucleus, and drew the analogy that a closed shell of electrons leads to stable atoms; for example, the noble gases.

 She shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with Eugene Wigner and Hans Jensen. She died in 1972.