![]() ![]() During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear weapons program, cataloguing the fission products of uranium. He was an opponent of national socialism and the persecution of Jews by the Nazi Party that caused the removal of many of his colleagues, including Meitner, who was forced to flee Germany in 1938. Between 19, he worked with Strassmann and Meitner on the study of isotopes created through the neutron bombardment of uranium and thorium, which led to the discovery of nuclear fission. After the war he became the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, while remaining in charge of his own department. Working with the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner in the building that now bears their names, he made a series of groundbreaking discoveries, culminating with her isolation of the longest-lived isotope of protactinium in 1918.ĭuring World War I he served with a Landwehr regiment on the Western Front, and with the chemical warfare unit headed by Fritz Haber on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts, earning the Iron Cross (2nd Class) for his part in the First Battle of Ypres. ![]() In 1912, he became head of the Radioactivity Department of the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Hahn completed his habilitation in the spring of 1907 and became a Privatdozent. He returned to Germany in 1906 Emil Fischer placed a former woodworking shop in the basement of the Chemical Institute at the University of Berlin at his disposal to use as a laboratory. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.Ī graduate of the University of Marburg, which awarded him a doctorate in 1901, Hahn studied under Sir William Ramsay at University College London and at McGill University in Montreal under Ernest Rutherford, where he discovered several new radioactive isotopes. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Otto Hahn ( pronounced ( listen) 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry.
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