Nobel Prize Recipient. Maria Coeppert Mayer, a German-born American nuclear physicist, received recognition after being awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics. She shared her half of the Nobel Prize with German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen. These scientists were honored with the award, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." The other half of the Nobel Prize was given to Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner for his contributions. She received 27 nominations for the Nobel Prize candidacy. Following Marie Curie in 1903, she was the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics, sixty years later. Born the only child, she descended into a family, who had seven straight generations of college professors. In 1910 her family relocated to Gottingen. Although it was difficult for a woman to enter a university, especially to study science, her parents hired tutors to prepare for the entrance examination. There were only four females taking her college entrance examination; all the female students passed the examination, yet only one passed of 30 male students. In 1924 she enrolled at the University at Göttingen, majoring in mathematics but later changed to physics. She had an opportunity to have a semester at Cambridge University in England, where she learned to speak English. Her doctorate thesis was reviewed by three Nobel Prize recipients: James Franck was awarded in 1925; Adolf Windaus was awarded in 1928; and Max Born, who would receive the 1954 Nobel Prize for his part in developing quantum mechanics. Her thesis was on the theory of possible two-photon absorption by atoms, which was impossible until the laser was invented in 1961. Honoring her, the two-photon absorption cross section was later named the Goeppert Mayer unit. In 1929 she met Joseph E. Mayer, an American, who was at Gottingen University studying under James Franck on a Rockefeller Fellowship. They were married in Germany. In 1930 the couple relocated to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Most of the colleges where her husband was a professor had anti-nepotism rules, thus she could not be a paid employee. For most of her career, she performed research "just for the fun of doing physics," without pay or status or a tenured position. She became a United States naturalized citizen in 1932. She and her husband, a physical chemist, co-wrote "Statistical Mechanics" in 1940. During World War II, she worked with isotope separation for the Manhattan Project at Columbia University in New York City, for which she was paid by the United States government. She also worked briefly with Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb," on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory. After the war, she followed her husband to the University of Chicago, holding a non-paying associate professor position. Although she and Jensen preformed research independently from each other, his research gave evidence her findings were true. In 1955 the two scientists co-authored the textbook "Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure." Through the years, she had published her findings in scientific periodicals and co-authored at least four textbooks on physics. In 1960, at the age of 54, she was made a full-professor with a salary at the University of California in San Diego. The same year, she suffered from a debilitating stroke, gaining limited rehabilitation. After a 1971 heart attack, she was bedridden with limited cognitive function until her death. She and her husband were parents to a son and a daughter. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Heidelberg in Germany. She received honorary doctorate science degrees from three women educational facilities: Russel Sage College, Mount Holyoke College and Smith College. The Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award was established in 1989 by the American Physical Society in recognition of an outstanding contribution to physics research by a woman. The award consists of $3,000 for lecture tours to universities. During her era, she gracefully overcame the prejudices of a woman in scientific research, receiving the Nobel Prize for her efforts.