At the end of 1907, Dr. Lise Meitner came to Berlin from Vienna and then began more than thirty years' collaboration. Their joint work embraced: investigations on beta-rays, their absorbability, magnetic spectra, etc.; use of the radioactive recoil, discovered shortly before by Hahn, to obtain new radioactive transformation products.
Between 1914 and 1918 Hahn's work was interrupted by his service in the First World War, but he resumed his research with Professor Meitner in 1918, and discovered protactinium, the long-lived mother substance of the actinium series. Hahn's own particular sphere was chemistry and he further discovered uranium Z, the first case of a nuclear isomerism of radioactive kinds of atoms. Using radioactive methods he investigated the absorption and precipitation of the smallest quantities of substances, normal and abnormal formation of crystals, etc. Hahn used the emanation method to test substances superficially rich or poor, and he elaborated the strontium method to determine the age of geological periods.
Following the discovery of artificial radioactivity by Marie Curie and the use of neutrons by Fermi for atomic nuclear processes, Hahn again collaborated with Professor Meitner and afterwards with Dr. Fritz Strassmann on the processes of irradiating uranium and thorium with neutrons. This led to the discovery of an artificially active uranium isotope, which represents the basic substance of the elements neptunium and plutonium, first revealed later in America.
The discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932 gave new impetus to radioactivity studies because this uncharged atomic particle could penetrate the secrets of the atomic nucleus more successfully.
Hahn served as chemical warfare specialist for the Germans in WWI. He was not part of Germany's bomb program during WWII. Nominated in 1944 for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Hahn was unable to collect his award due to his present situation as prisoner of Britain.
After the Second World War, he was a campaigner against the use of nuclear weapons. In 1955 Otto initiated the Mainau Declaration which warned of the dangers of atomic weapons. His life ended in a falling accident. Presented below is a brief list of achievements:
References:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1944/hahn-bio.html
http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/otto-hahn.html
http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/atomic-and-nuclear-structure/hahn-meitner-strassman.aspx
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/meitner.html
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Strassmann.shtml
I'm currently reading a biography of Lise Meitner. She's one of my heroes. She was the second woman to receive a PhD in physics in Austria and when she first started working with Otto Hahn, the person in charge of the lab Otto worked in did not want a woman to work in the building so she was forced to work in the basement of the building. She also spent a large part of her time working without pay because they would not give a professor's position to a woman.
ReplyDeleteThis was very interesting! Its to bad that these people did not know as much about radiation shielding back then as we do now. Some of them might have lived to be much older and advanced the field even further.
ReplyDeleteActually they did. They didn't really know about increased risk of cancer but Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn both lived to be 89. Maybe that's a case for hormesis if anything.
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