Otto Hahn: Biography

Otto Hahn BiographyOtto HahnBy Eli Biedenb give the sackerOtto Hahn was a shining german chemist, who was regarded as the father of nuclear chemistry for his conk out in radiochemistry and radiotherapy. He withal was a wide political militant fully against future examen or use of the nuclear weapons. Otto was the give-and-take of a prosperous glazier and entrepreneur Glasbau Hahn and his wife Charlotte Hahn. Otto was born in s asideh Germany (Frankfurt am Main) on March 8th 1879. He was the youngest of the family and had iii brothers Karl, Heiner and Julius. Ottos st artistic creationed to realise an enliven in chemistry at the age of 15 exclusively his father wanted him to become an architect, but he end up going to University of Marburg for chemistry. He began to study chemistry and mineralogy with side interest in philosophy and physical science. Later in his college career Otto drops some physics and science related classes in favor of art and philosophy. During his c ollege years he was in a student fraternity which is a forerunner of todays Nibelungia confederation and he graduated with his doctorate in 1901.After graduation Otto does a year of military service and comes back to the university to depart as a chemistry leacture assassist with hopes of going into industry, but after twain years he moved to London to learn english and do research with Sir WIlliam Ramsay. mend with Ramsay, Otto was purifying a crude right ascension and discovered a invigorated radioactive substance, which he called radiothorium. Excited by his early success and advance by Ramsay, he decided to continue with research on radioactivity rather than go into industry. With Ramsays support he obtained a raise at the University of Berlin. Before taking it up, he decided to spend several(prenominal) months in Montreal with Ernest Rutherford to gain further experience with radioactivity. After re go to Germany, Hahn was get unneurotic by Lise Meitner, an Austrian-bo rn physicist, and five years by and by they moved to the new Kaiser Wilhelm initiate for interpersonal chemistry. There Hahn became head of a small, independent department of radiochemistry.Otto met his wife to be, Edith Junghans, an art student at the Knigliche Kunstschule (Royal Academy of Art) in Berlin. The couple hook up with in Ediths native city of Stettin, on 22 March 1913. deplorably World War I started the year after their marriage. REsulting in Hahn have to go to war. Otto was enlisted to a regiment, that was focused on the development of chemical warfare. In the regiment he worked with James Franck and Gustav Hertz, under the direction of Fritz Haber. Ottos whole created and tested poison gas that was produced for military purposes. In December 1916, Hahn was transferred out of the front lines back to Berlin, where he was able to resume his radiochemical research. After the war, Hahn use himself to his work on radioactivity and with Meitners help, they were among th e branch to isolate protactinium-231, an isotope of a recently discovered (at that time) radioactive element protactinium. Otto then devoted the following(a) 12 years of his career to study usefulness of radioactive methods to decide chemical problems. On February 1921, Otto finally published his first report on the baring of uranium Z (later known as Pa 234 ), the first example of nuclear isomerism, this became a huge principle after Ottos time when nuclear physics started getting more attention. In 1934 Hahn set up the work of Enrico femtometre, which free-base that when the heaviest natural element, uranium, is hit by neutrons, several radioactive daughter molecules are created. Fermis results stated that artificial elements were form that were comparable uranium. Hahn, Meitner and Strassmann repeated Fermis experiment and obtained results that were comparable with Fermis results but as the team did more trails, the data got worse. The Hahn convocation did discover that m ultiple isotopes of four elements resulted from the fission of uranium and that those elements had atomic amount of 93 through and through 96.This was later was found to be wrong. Hahns concourse was the first scientists to calculate the half- deportment of U 239 which also proved chemically that it is an isotope of U. They were unable to identify the decay product of 239 U and continue this work to its fruition. The decay product is neptunium but this task was completed later by Edwin McMillan and Philip H. Abelson. In the year 1938 Meitner fled Germany to escape the persecution of the Jews, but Hahn and Strassmann stayed and continued the research. Hahn was her sequestered supporter gave her a diamond ring he had inherited from his mother, to be used to bribe the frontier guards if required. In late 1938 Hahn and Strassmann found isotopes of an alkalescent earth metallic element in the by-products produced from a nuclear reactions. The metal was found to be organic barium salt . Finding an alkaline earth metal in the results did not fit with the other elements found but was a major step in their research. Hahn though that the by-product could be radium radium, produced from two alpha-particles coming away from the uranium sum. At the time, Hahn thought it had to be radium because even two alpha particles coming away from the nucleus from this process was considered very unlikely. So the idea of uranium losing 100 neutrons and turning into barium was seen as impossible. During a gaucherie to Copenhagen, Hahn mentioned these results to well known scientists Niels Bohr and Lise Meitner. using his colleagues advice he refined the experiment which lead him to the results he was looking for. On December 1938 his experiment a radium-barium-mesothorium-fractionation as Otto called it was performed and produced three isotopes that were observed as barium instead of the expected radium. This gave Otto the evidence he needed. In 1938 Hahn get off Meitner a repor t of his findings. She developed an explanation to the results and together they named it nuclear fission. Lise Meitner and her nephew, a physicist Otto Robert Frisch, came to the same conclusion and worked out the basic calculations of nuclear fission, which was officially coined by Frisch, and became globally known. Over the following months, two articles were published that explained and had experimental cogent evidence on the nuclear fission written by Frisch and Meitner. In their plump for publication they talked round uranium fission which they called Uranspaltung. This article predicted the freeing of superfluous neutrons during the fission process, which Frdric Joliot and his team proved to be reach reaction.During the war and around 1945, Otto Hahn together with his assistants had a list of 25 elements and about 100 isotopes whose existence he had demonstrated through his experiments. The disastrous implications of this discovery were realized by scientists before the outbreak of World War II, and a group was formed in Germany to study possible military developments. a lot to Hahns relief, he was allowed to continue with his own researches free of military interference.At the end of World War II in 1945 Hahn was suspected of working on the German nuclear energy project to develop an atomic bomb, but his only connection was the discovery of fission he did not work on the program. In April 1945, Hahn and nine leading German physicists were taken into bonds by the in additions Mission and taken to Cambridge, England, from 3 July 1945 to 3 January 1946. While they were there, the German scientists learned of the dropping of the American atom bombs on Japan. Hahn took this very bad, as he felt that because he had discovered nuclear fission he shared responsibility for the death and suffering of tens of thousands of innocent Japanese people. early on in January 1946, the group was allowed to return to Germany. While he was in England he was t archa ic that they awarded him the Nobel Prize for 1944. The Nobel of 1944 was for chemistry, Ottos discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei.From 1948 to 1960 Otto Hahn was the founding President of the newly formed Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, which through his tireless activity and his globewide respected personality succeeded in world renown in the the scientific community. Although now aged and re tire, he was dummy up a vigorous man a lifelong mountaineer, he maintain physical fitness during the enforced stay in England by a daily run. On his return to Germany he was elected president of the author Kaiser Wilhelm Society and became a respected public figure, a spokesman for science, and a plugger of Theodor Heuss, the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany. Otto campaigned against further development and testing of nuclear weapons. In January 1958, Otto Hahn, together with his friend Albert Schweitzer signed the Pauling Appeal to the u nited Nations in New York for the immediate conclusion of an international agreement to divulge the testing of nuclear weapons, and in October, he signed the international transcription to call a meeting to draw up a world constitution on the issue of nuclear weapons. He never tired of warning urgently of the dangers of the nuclear arms race between the great powers and of the radioactive contamination that would lead to the destruction of the planet. Honours came to him from all sides in 1966 he, Meitner, and Strassmann shared the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award. As well as Hahn was also repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a shape of international organizations but never got a second one. This period of his life was saddened, when, their only child, Hanno, born in 1922, which became a distinguished art historian and architectural researcher, who was also known for his discoveries in the early Cistercian architecture of the twelfth century. In August 1960, while on a study trip in France, Dr Hanno Hahn was involved in a fatal car accident, together with his wife and assistant Ilse Hahn, leaving a 14 year old son. The loss of his only son devastated him and his wife never recovered from the shock. Hahn died in 1968, after a fall his wife outlived him by only two weeks. Hahns death did not stop his popularity, proposals were made at many antithetic times, that the newly synthesized element no. 105 should be named hahnium in Hahns honor. But, sadly it did not go through and was named hassium after its finders. Also In 1964 the only atomic number 63an nuclear-powered civilian ship, the freighter NS Otto Hahn, was named in his honor. umpteen cities and districts in the German-speaking countries have secondary schools, streets, squares and bridges throughout Europe bearing Ottos name. More than twenty states worldwide have esteemed Otto Hahn by issuing coins, medals or stamps with his portrait.ReferencesWikipedia.org ,http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O tto_Hahn ( 16 Oct 2014)Otto Hahn Biographical. Nobelprize.org. 16 Oct 2014. http//www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1944/hahn-bio.htmlChemistry in history ChemHeritage.org http//www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/atomic-and-nuclear-structure/hahn-meitner-strassman.aspx (16 Oct 2014)