Otto Hahn

Biography

Otto Hahn is with Francfort-sur-le-Main, in Germany, the March 8th 1879. His/her father Heinrich Hahn, of country stock, was glazier and transformed his small artisanal workshop into a flourishing company. Child, whereas his father dreamed to make of him an architect, Otto Hahn made chemistry experiments in the wash-house of the family home. He was already famous for his extraordinary memory.

The first research

It is in 1897 that he undertakes studies of chemistry and mineralogy with Munich and with Marbourg. To perfect its English knowledge, Otto Hahn leaves for the university London, at Sir William Ramsay which had discovered the rare Gases. It is at the laboratory of Ramsay that it starts to be interested in the natural Radioactivité which had just been discovered. It foresees the possibility of the existence of a still unknown element, the radiothorium, father of the Thorium X. It asks Sir Ernest Rutherford, then with Montreal, a place to come to work with him. This last, not believing in the radiothorium which had been proven only chemically, initiates Otto Hahn with the physics of the rays alpha. It is in Montreal that Otto Hahn discovers thorium C, transmitting alpha and beta of short period, as well as radioactinium. Its stay in Canada marks it deeply. He says to have found there, for the remainder of his life, a scale of values.

Return in Germany

It turns over to Germany, at the Institute of chemistry of the university of Berlin where it meets, in 1907, Lise Meitner, which came from the Institute of physics of the university of Vienna. He will undertake with her a thirty years collaboration.

In March 1913, Otto Hahn had married Edith Junghans of Stettin, which intended for professorship art and of drawing. In 1922 their sons, Hanno Hahn, was born with Berlin (death in France, with its Ilse wife, in 1960).

It is in Otto Hahn that one owes also the discovery of mésothorium I (1907), of mésothorium II (1907), of the ionium (1907), then protactinium (1917), in collaboration with Lise Meitner. Otto Hahn highlighted nuclear isomerism, in 1921, on the Uranium Z.

It was also interested in the formation of the isotopes of the Strontium, which is at the base of the method of dating known today like " method of rubidium-strontium".

During this research, Otto Hahn showed particularly remarkable talents of chemist. With a rigorous intellectual honesty, it did not leave of with dimensions any small fact; very persevering, it handled with a very great care and much of precision; very conscientious, it noted all the if and the but in its book of laboratory.

With Meitner Dye stick, then with its assistant Fritz Strassmann, it launched out, since 1935, in the study of what one thought of being then transuranians. At the end of 1938, with Fritz Strassmann, thanks to a radiochemical analysis meticulous person, Otto Hahn discovered the fragmentation of uranium in two lighter cores, phenomenon which was called fission. The article carrying their signature was sent to the review " Naturwissenschaften" December 22nd, 1938 and published in the number of January 6th, 1939. It is the birth certificate of nuclear energy.

For this work, the discovery of nuclear fission, Otto Hahn is lived to decree, in 1945, the Nobel Prize of chemistry for the year 1944. The government Nazi had wished that it refusat this price. It could go to receive it only with the end of the year 1946.

Post-war period

On arrival of the allied troops, in Germany, Otto Hahn with some of his/her colleagues was taken along during a few months to England, in Farmhall. After its return, it settled in Göttingen, where it worked with the transformation of the Company Kaiser Wilhelm into Company max Planck, of which he was the first president of 1946 to 1960.

After the war it became militant against the use of the nuclear weapons and it put its compatriots keeps some against any inhuman use of the scientific discoveries.

Otto Hahn was member or member of honor in 45 Academies and Sociétés scientific and also prize winner of 37 medals and orders in everyone. In 1959 was named Officier in the National order of the Légion of honor by the president Charles de Gaulle. Hahn was also prize winner of the Médaille Faraday of the Royal British Chemical Society in London in 1956.

Otto Hahn had very strong and very rich personality. Although modest, he was delighted by his growing popularity. " I believe that I am famous, but I am only a chimiste" , he said. Mountaineer, it made readily rises without guide. Otto Hahn liked the music - Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaïkovski. One says that he sang, as tenor, in a choral society directed by max Planck, before the First World War.

Otto Hahn dies in Göttingen, on July 28th, 1968, Master insurpassé in art to identify the radioactive elements and bodies.

Proposals were made on several occasions to give the name of Hahnium to chemical elements, in particular with the elements 105 and 108, without success.

The first nuclear reactor trading vessel, the NS '' Otto Hahn '', bears its name.

See too

Race with the bomb

May 9th 1957 -->

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