Meitnerium was first produced by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenber and their team working at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany in 1982. They bombarded atoms of bismuth-209 with ions of iron-58 with a device known as a linear accelerator. This produced atoms of meitnerium-266, an isotope with a half-life of about 3.8 milliseconds (0.0038 seconds), and a free neutron.

Meitnerium's most stable isotope, meitnerium-276, has a half-life of about 0.72 seconds. It decays into bohrium-272 through alpha decay.

Since only small amounts of meitnerium have ever been produced, it currently has no uses outside of basic scientific research.