No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs

Erica Westly in Scientific American:

1.) Lise Meitner--left out of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission
In 1907 Meitner, a physicist by training, began collaborating with German chemist, Otto Hahn. They worked together for 30 years until 1938 when Meitner, an Austrian Jew, was forced to leave Nazi Germany. She moved to Sweden, but they continued their collaboration by mail. The letters between the two scientists indicate that Meitner guided Hahn through the experiments that led to the discovery of nuclear fission, according to her biographer, Ruth Lewin Sime. But Hahn published the results without including Meitner as a co-author, a move she understood at the time given the political climate. �Historians say that Hahn initially indicated that he intended to credit Meitner when it was safe to do so but that, in the end, he took sole credit, claiming that the discovery was his alone. Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Meitner was nominated multiple times in both the physics and chemistry categories, but the award always eluded her. Many Nobel omissions are debatable, but, most physicists today agree that Meitner was robbed, says Phillip Schewe, chief science writer for the American Institute of Physics.

More here.