title: Maria Goeppert Mayer
text: Maria Goeppert Mayer (June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel Laureate in Physics. The nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus was her idea. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Marie Curie was the first.
  
  Mayer died on February 20, 1972 at a hospital in California, United States at the age of 65.
  
  Nobel Prize in Physics winners
  1906 births
  1972 deaths
  American theoretical physicists