Who discovered nuclear fission

One of the Allies' greatest fears during Wunderwaffen, or “wonder weapons.” Some of the rumored weapons were outlandish, such as earthquake generators and death rays. But others, like bacterial weapons, rockets and new deadly gasses, were entirely feasible. Most concerning? The possibility that the Germans would manufacture—and detonate—an At the outset of World War II, Germany far outpaced other countries in atomic research. In 1938, German scientists READ MORE: To learn the truth, the Americans organized a covert special-ops unit in 1943, tasked with discovering Nazi nuclear secrets and capturing their top scientists. Code-named the Alsos Mission, and nicknamed “Lightning A,” the unit consisted of a small force of scientists and counterintelligence troops, headed by Colonel Boris T. Pash. A counterintelligence officer who had run security for America’s own nuclear-weapons efforts, the Manhattan Project, Pash had uncovered a ring of communist spies trying to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. Colonel Pash and his team initially followed the Allies onto the front lines of Italy and France, interrogating scientists and capturing research. These efforts led American intelligence to conclude that Germany likely did not have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. But they didn’t have proof, and with the world already beginning to evolve into a To prevent that from happening, Pash led Lightning A on its most dangerous and audacious operation yet: across enemy lines and into Germa...

(1871-1937) Who Was Ernest Rutherford? A pioneer of nuclear physics and the first to split the atom, Ernest Rutherford was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of atomic structure. Dubbed the “Father of the Nuclear Age,” Rutherford died in Cambridge, England, on October 19, 1937, of a strangulated hernia. Early Life and Education Ernest Rutherford was born in rural Spring Grove, on the South Island of New Zealand on August 30, 1871. He was the fourth of 12 children and the second son. His father, James, had little education and struggled to support the large family on a flax millers' income. Ernest’s mother, Martha, worked as a schoolteacher. She believed that knowledge was power, and placed a strong emphasis on her children’s education. As a child, Ernest, whose family called him “Ern,” spent most of his time after school milking cows and helping with other chores on the family farm. Weekends were spent swimming in the creek with his brothers. Since money was tight, Rutherford found inventive ways of overcoming his family’s financial challenges, including birds-nesting to earn funds for his kite-flying supplies. “We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think,” was Rutherford’s motto at the time. At the age of 10, Rutherford was handed his first science book, at Foxhill School. It was a pivotal moment for Rutherford, given that the book inspired his very first scientific experiment. The young Rutherford constructed a miniature cannon, which, to his family...

In 1904 he went to London, primarily to learn English, and worked at University College with radiothorium, was present. Fired by this early success and encouraged by Ramsay, who thought highly of him, he decided to continue with research on Feeling that his future was more secure, Hahn married Edith Junghans, the daughter of the chairman of After the war, Hahn and Meitner were among the first to isolate Discovery of nuclear fission In 1934 Hahn became keenly interested in the work of the Italian physicist

Share this • Share on Facebook: Otto Hahn – Facts Share this content on Facebook Facebook • Tweet: Otto Hahn – Facts Share this content on Twitter Twitter • Share on LinkedIn: Otto Hahn – Facts Share this content on LinkedIn LinkedIn • Share via Email: Otto Hahn – Facts Share this content via Email Email this page Otto Hahn Facts Otto Hahn The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1944 Born: 8 March 1879, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Germany Died: 28 July 1968, Göttingen, West Germany (now Germany) Affiliation at the time of the award: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (now Max-Planck Institut) für Chemie, Berlin-Dahlem, Germany Prize motivation: “for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei” Otto Hahn received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1945. Prize share: 1/1 Work The discovery of the neutron in 1932 provided a powerful new tool for investigating atoms. When Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman irradiated uranium with neutrons in 1939, they created barium, which was far too light an element to be a decay product of uranium. Hahn's long-time colleague, Lise Meitner, and her nephew, Otto Frisch, tackled the problem from a theoretical standpoint and proved that the uranium nucleus had been split. The phenomenon, later called “fission”, proved important in developing nuclear weapons and energy. To cite this section MLA style: Otto Hahn – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Fri. 16 Jun 2023. Several outreach organisations and activities have been developed to inspire generations and...

The discovery opened the door to research by scientists around the world and in 1942 the first nuclear reactor was successfully tested at the University of Chicago. Most early atomic research was focused on developing weapons for the second world war, under the code name Manhattan Project. On 6 August 1945 an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb immediately killed about 80,000 people and tens of thousands would later die of radiation exposure. After the war, the US government backed the development of nuclear energy for civilian purposes. The Atomic The UK’s first nuclear reactor was built in 1947 at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, to demonstrate the viability of commercial reactors. In 1954 Britain established its own atomic energy authority, to carry out nuclear research, develop nuclear deterrents and reactor technologies. The UK’s first commercial reactor, Calder Hall in Cumberland, was opened by the Queen in 1956 and the UK government claimed it was “the first station anywhere in the world to produce electricity from atomic energy on a full industrial scale”. But since then a number of nuclear disasters around the world have blighted the industry. On 28 March 1979 a reactor was damaged at Less than a decade later, however, disaster struck in Ukraine at Chernobyl power station. In the early hours of 26 April 1986 one of four nuclear reactors exploded. The fallout forced te...

Lise Meitner was a pioneering physicist who studied radioactivity and nuclear physics. She was part of a team that discovered nuclear fission — a term she coined — but she was overlooked in 1945 when her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She has been called the "mother of the atomic bomb," even though she did not directly have anything to do with its development. Element No. 109, meitnerium, was named in her honor. Life and findings Lise Meitner was born on November 7, 1878, in Vienna, the third child in eight in her Jewish family. Because of Austrian restrictions on female education, Meitner wasn't allowed to attend college; however, her family could afford private education, which she completed in 1901. She went on to graduate school at the University of Vienna. Inspired by her teacher, physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, she studied physics and focused her research on radioactivity. She became the second woman to receive a doctorate degree at the university in 1905. Meitner and Hahn were research partners for around 30 years. During their research, they were one of the first to isolate the isotope protactinium-231, according to In 1938, after Germany annexed Austria, Vienna-born Meitner fled Nazi Germany and moved to Sweden, where it was safer for the Jewish people like herself, even though she was a practicing Protestant. She found herself at the Manne Siegbahn's institute in Stockholm, but she never seemed welcomed. Ruth Lewin Sime later wrote in h...