Otto Hahn

Max Delbrück – Co-founder of Modern Molecular Biology and Genetics

3. September 2018 Harald Sack

On September 4, 1906, German biophysicist and Nobel laureate Max Delbrück was born in Berlin. His best known achievement for that he won the Nobel prize was the discovy that bacteria become resistant to viruses (phages) as a result of genetic mutations. “If you’re too sloppy, then you never get reproducible results, and then you never can draw any conclusions; but if you are just a little sloppy, then when you see…

chemistry

Otto Hahn – the Father of Nuclear Chemistry

8. March 2018 Tabea Tietz

On March 8, 1879, German chemist and pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry Otto Hahn was born. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery and the radiochemical proof of nuclear fission at the exclusion of his colleague Lise Meitner. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry. Otto Hahn studied chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Marburg. During his third and fourth semester,…

physics

James Chadwick and the Discovery of the Neutron

27. February 2018 Harald Sack

On February 27, 1932, English physicist and Nobel Laureate Sir James Chadwick published an article in the scientific journal ‘Nature‘ about the discovery of the neutron, a previously unknown particle in the atomic nucleus. James Chadwick was born and raised in Bollington, England and later studied at Manchester and Cambridge University. Just before the start of World War I, Chadwick moved to Berlin, studying at the city’s Technical University under Ernest Rutherford and Hans…

physics

Leo Szilard and the Atomic Bomb

11. February 2015 Harald Sack

On February 11, 1898, Hungarian-American physicist and inventor Leo Szilárd was born. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 together with Albert Einstein wrote the letter that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. He also conceived the electron microscope, the linear accelerator, and also the cyclotron. Szilárd was born in Budapest, Hungary, as son of Louis Spitz, a…

physics

The First Self-Sustained Nuclear Chain Reaction

2. December 2012 Tabea Tietz

Time: 3:22 p.m, December 2, 1942. Place: Racquets Court under West Stands of Stagg Field, University of Chicago. Depiction of scientist(s) observed the world’s first nuclear reactor (CP-1) as it became self-sustaining, National Archives Identifier 542144 On December 2, 1942, during the Manhattan Project, a team led by Italian born physicist Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the world’s first human-made nuclear reactor, and…

physics

Lise Meitner – The Misjudged Genius

27. October 2012 Tabea Tietz

Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn On October 27, 1968 the scientist Lise Meitner passed away. She is known today for her passionate and extraordinary work on radioactivity and nuclear physics along with her colleague Otto Hahn, who was honored with the Nobel Prize while Meitner stayed unrecognized. Born in 1878 in Vienna, Lise Meitner’s talents were early detected, not unusual for scientists who achieved these major efforts in their later lives. It was…