This Day in Science History -
March 8
- Otto Hahn
March 8th is Otto Hahn's birthday. Hahn
was a German chemist who was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for the discovery of nuclear fission. Fission is when an atomic nucleus
splits into two smaller nuclei and releases energy.
Hahn, together with Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, had been investigating
the radioactive decay of uranium with a focus on the recently discovered
neutron. They expected to find that when uranium is bombarded with neutrons, the
uranium nucleus would absorb the neutrons and transmute into other elements.
Instead, they found evidence of barium in their samples. Meitner and her nephew
Otto Frisch recognized that barium's atomic mass was approximately half of
uranium. They showed the uranium atom split into the smaller
pieces when bombarded with neutrons and discovered fission.
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