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Biography of Otto HahnName: Otto HahnBirth Date: March 8, 1879 Death Date: 1968 Place of Birth: Frankfurt am Main, Germany Nationality: German Gender: Male Occupations: chemist, scientist Otto Hahn The German chemist Otto Hahn (1879-1968) was a joint discoverer of nuclear fission and a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry.Otto Hahn was born in Frankfurt am Main on March 8, 1879. He was the youngest son of the owner of a prosperous glazing business. After leaving school in Frankfurt, he went to Marburg University with the intention of entering the chemical industry. Research on bromine derivatives of isoeugenol led to a doctorate in 1901, and after a year's military service he returned to Marburg to continue his research.The turning point in Hahn's career came in 1904. He had in mind an industrial post for which knowledge of a foreign language was desirable, so he worked under Sir William Ramsay at University College, London. His task was to separate radium from a sample of impure barium chloride. Within a few months he showed that another radioactive substance was present and named it radiothorium. Urged …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…by Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in January 1939 was the first indication that the atomic nucleus had been split. This discovery of nuclear fission became, of course, the basis for the production of nuclear weapons, a development which Hahn always deplored.Hahn was a prisoner of war in England for a few months in 1945, and the next year he received the Nobel Prize for chemistry, which he had been awarded for 1944. Twenty years later Germany's first nuclear vessel was appropriately named Otto Hahn. Further Reading A primary source is Hahn's A Scientific Autobiography (1962; trans. 1966). A detailed biographical profile of Hahn is in the Royal Society, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (vol. 16, 1970). See also Otto Robert Frisch, ed., Trends in Atomic Physics: Essays Dedicated to Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Max von Laue on the Occasion of Their 80th Birthday (1959), and Eduard Farber, Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry, 1901-1961 (1953; rev. ed. 1963). |