Maria Goeppert-MayerMaria Goeppert-Mayer was a famous physicist of the early 1900s. She was born on June 28, 1906 in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, (now 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 remained and spent most of her life until her marriage. Maria Forst began by attending public schools in Göttingen, but because she was so intelligent she was also able to attend private schools. After obtaining her abitur in 1924 at her private school Maria was accepted at the University of Göttingen, with the decision to be a mathematician. In addition to going to Cambridge, England, where he stayed for a term to learn English, much of his education was acquired in Göttingen. Shortly after deciding on her career choice, she decided that mathematics wasn't right for her, and that's when she discovered that she really liked physics. Max Born (who was also a famous physicist) was one of her closest friends who helped her when it came to her scientific education. Maria Geoppert-Mayer married Joseph Edward Mayer in 1930. After the wedding she followed him back to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where she taught physics. Since most universities at the time would never think of 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 in the development of chemical physics. She wrote many articles with Karlz F. Herzfeld and her husband on his new concern in physics which was the color of organic molecules. After receiving his doctorate he moved to Columbia in 1936 where he taught for a year at Sarah Lawrence College, but still worked primarily at the SAM Laboratory directed by Harold Urey. After staying there for ten years, they moved to Chicago in 1946, the first place where she was finally cared for with open arms. Maria immediately became a professor at the Department of Physics and at the Institute of Nuclear Studies. She was also employed at 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..