Otto Hahn - the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1944
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering Chemistry Nuclear Engineering Physics |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Community - Award/Recognition/Scholarship |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Nobelprize.org |
| Description: | Biography of Otto Hahn from the Nobel Prize website. The site has a bio, the Nobel lecture and related resources. Excerpt: "Otto Hahn was born on 8th March, 1879, at Frankfurt-on-Main. He attended the secondary high school there until he matriculated. From 1897 Hahn studied chemistry at Marburg and Munich, taking his doctorate examination in 1901 at Marburg and submitting to Professor Theodor Zincke a thesis on organic chemistry. He obtained a post as assistant in the Chemical Institute at Marburg, staying there two years, after which he worked under Sir William Ramsay at University College, London, from the autumn of 1904 to the following summer. His work here was rewarded by the discovery of a new radioactive substance, radiothorium, while working on the preparation of pure radium salts. From the autumn of 1905 to the summer of the following year Hahn was at the Physical Institute of McGill University, Montreal (Canada) working under Professor Ernest Rutherford. Here he discovered radioactinium and conducted investigations with Rutherford on alpha-rays of radiothorium and radioactinium. On his return to Europe Hahn moved to Berlin, to the Chemical Institute (Emil Fischer) of the University and there he qualified as a university lecturer in the spring of 1907, which year also saw his discovery of mesothorium. 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 M and Mme. Joliot-Curie and the use of neutrons by Fermi for atomic nuclear processes, Hahn again collaborated with Professor Meitner and afterwards with Dr. Strassmann on the processes of irradiating uranium and thorium with neutrons. Hahn and Prof. Meitner had also worked together on the discovery of an artificially active uranium isotope, which represents the basic substance of the elements neptunium and plutonium, first revealed later in America." |
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| Keywords: | Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, nulcear fusion, Otto Hahn, Nobel prize in chemistry |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | Could be studies in terms of history's differential treatment of Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Hahn. |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1944/hahn... |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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