Lise Meitner
By Tamara W
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn was born in Frankfurt-on-Main on the 8th of March 1879. Starting
in 1897 Hahn studied chemistry at Marburg and Munich, he took his doctorate
examination in 1901 at Marburg. In the autumn of 1905 to the summer that
followed from came to Canada to the Physical Institute of McGill University,
Montreal. He worked under Professor Ernest Rutherford. During this time
he discovered radioactinium and conducted investigations with Rutherford
on alpha-rays of radiothorium and radioactinium.
After that he returned the Berlin, in Europe. In 1907 Dr. Lise Meitner
arrived to Berlin from Vienna. They began an amazing partnership. 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. He
served the First World War. During that time Meitner and he wrote letter
to each other. In 1913 Hahn married Edith, née Junghans and they
had one son, named Hanno. He was born in 1922, and killed by accident
in 1960. Otto Hahn sadly passed away the 28th of July 1968.
Otto Hahn
Otto Robert Frisch
Otto Robert Frisch
Otto Robert Frisch is the nephew
of Lise Meitner. He was born in Vienna, Austria on the 1st of October
1904. He came from a Jewish family. He had attended school in Vienna,
after graduating, he worked at Hamburg under Otto Stern supervision. Like
Lise Meitner he was forced to escape Nazi Germany in 1933/34. He escaped
to Britain. Frisch also obtained a position at Copenhagen with Niel Bohr.
In 1938, Frisch and Meitner described fission of uranium after bombardment
by neutrons. While the Second World War was taking place he was part of
the British delegation to the Manhattan Project, working as head of the
Critical Assembly Group. He returned to England to direct the physics
department at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He passed away in Cambridge,
Cambridgeshire, England on the 22nd of September 1979.
Fritz Strassmann
Fritz Strassmann was born in Boppard, Germany on the 22nd of February,
1902. He studied at the Technical University of Hannover and he obtained
his Ph.D in Physics in 1929. The next major event that happened to Strassmann
was helped develop the rubidium-strontium method of dating used in geochronology.
He joined Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Chemistry and in 1938 discovered that uranium nuclei split when
bombarded with neutrons. After that he became the director of the chemistry
department at the Max Planck Institute. He passed away in Mainz on April
22, 1980.
Fritz Strassmann
Refenced Websites:
1. Otto Hahn-Biography. Nobelproze.org. December 18, 2005. <http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1944/hahn-bio.html>
2. Otto Robert Frisch. NNDB. December 18, 2005. <http://www.nndb.com/people/119/000099819/>
3.Fritz Strassmann|Biography. Atomicarchive.com. December 18, 2005. <http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Strassmann.shtml>