Maria Goeppert-Mayer, German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1906)

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-American theoretical physicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner. One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Goeppert Mayer and Jensen for their model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, the first being Marie Curie in 1903. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901, the others being the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Physics is traditionally the first award presented in the Nobel Prize ceremony.

February 20 is the 51st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 314 days remain until the end of the year.