Meitner entered the University of Vienna in October 1901. She was particularly inspired by Ludwig Boltzmann and often spoke with enthusiasm about his lectures. Her dissertation was supervised by Franz Exner and his assistant Hans Benndorf. Her thesis, titled Prüfung einer Formel Maxwells ("Examination of a Maxwell Equation "), was submitted on 20 November 1905 and approved on 28 November. She passed an oral exam from Exner and Boltzmann on 19 December, and was awarded her doctorate on 1 February 1906. She became the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna, after Olga Steindler who had received her degree in 1903; the third was Selma Freud, who worked in the same laboratory as Meitner, and received hers in 1906. Meitner's thesis was published as Wärmeleitung in inhomogenen Körpern ("Thermal Conduction in Inhomogeneous Bodies") on 22 February 1906.