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Otto Hahn Facts

Otto Hahn Facts
Otto Hahn, OBE, ForMemRS (March 8, 1879 to July 28, 1968) was a German chemist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry."
Interesting Otto Hahn Facts:
Otto Hahn was the youngest of four brothers born to Heinrich Hahn, a prosperous businessman.
Hahn was interested in chemistry and wanted to become an industrial chemist.
In 1897 he entered the University of Marburg to study chemistry and mineralogy.
In 1901 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg with his dissertation titled, On Bromine Derivates of isoeugenol.
After he finished his mandatory one year of military service, he accepted a post as assistant to his doctoral advisor at Marburg.
In 1904 he entered University College of London both to improve his English and to further his ambition to work in industry.
He worked under Sir William Ramsay who had discovered inert gases.
At University College he worked on radiochemistry and in early 1905 he discovered thorium-228.
He originally thought it was a new element and its discovery was to announced to the Royal Society on March 16, 1905.
Ramsay recommended Hahn to Ernest Rutherford and from September 1905 until mid-1906 Hahn worked with Rutherford at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
While there he discovered polonium-212, lead-210, and thorium-227.
In 1906 Hahn returned to Germany to work at the University of Berlin with Emil Fischer.
At the University of Berlin he discovered thorium-230 which was stable enough to be used in medical radiation treatment.
He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1914 for his discoveries.
On September 28, 1907 he met Lisa Meitner and they became close friends and collaborators.
In 1908 he demonstrated radioactive recoil and correctly identified it as the result of alpha particle emission.
In 1920's he created the field of applied radiochemistry and his textbook on the subject was a major influence on scientists in both nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics.
On December 22, 1938 Hahn published his findings that splitting a nucleus created lighter elements which is the first publication of nuclear fission.
In 1945 he and several other German scientists was captured by the British and interned for the remainder of the war in Farm Hall near Cambridge.
Between 1914 and 1945 he was nominated 22 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and from 1937 to 1947 he was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
On November 15, 1945, The Royal Swedish Academy awarded him the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei" but he was still a prisoner of war and unable to attend the ceremony.
He finally received his medal from King Gustav V of Sweden on December 10, 1946.
He campaigned tirelessly against the use of nuclear weapons and wanted his discoveries to be used only for peaceful purposes.


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