Albert Einstein once said, “Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.” As a professor, mother, grandmother, wife and author, Dr. Ruth Sime has achieved it all, but it’s with her recent award that her persistence in the sciences continues through a new chapter of her life.

Sime, a Professor Emeritus of the City College Chemistry Department, now has something else to add to her resume: she was awarded a prestigious Simon Guggenheim fellowship this month for her biographical work on German-born Noble Prize-winning chemist Otto Hahn.

“I was really amazed. I applied and hadn’t thought about it,” Sime said. “I’m very pleased to get it, it’s very prestigious so to say.”

The Guggenheim Fellowship is very competitive: only 190 of 2,600 applicants were awarded the fellowship, which totals around $40,000 per person. According to the Foundation, they give out fellowships in order to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.” Sime sent in a description of her project along with four references of people who would review the project, which Sime believed was the hardest part.

“When you know who is reading the project you don’t want to embarrass yourself,” Sime said.

After she had submitted the application she continued her work without really thinking she’d get the award. It wasn’t until early April that it was made official in a New York Times article. Sime is now in the company of artists, scientists and scholars, which include two Pulitzer Prize winners, to pursue her work on Hahn, who is co-credited with the discovery of nuclear fission.

Sime’s work on Hahn started while researching her first book, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, the critically acclaimed biography of chemist Lise Meitner, whose work on the nuclear fission project with Hahn was uncredited as she had to escape from Berlin right before the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939. It took Sime 20 years to finish the Meitner biography, which was published in 1996.

“This one can’t take that long,” Sime said with a smile as she spoke of her timeline for the Hahn biography. “I wouldn’t do history of science unless I had something new to contribute.”

Sime says the biography won’t be hitting bookstores just yet. She hopes to finish this one in the next two to three years.

Sime has split her time since she retired in 2000 between her home in Sacramento and her research in Germany. Her husband Rodney Sime, a retired professor, travels with her and supports her though her work. Rodney said the thing that she has taught him is to be persistent.

“I’m very proud of her but in a way it’s unexpected because she has done such good work for a long time,” Rodney Sime said.