Curie and Savić's 'R 3.5' substance (precursor of fission)
Sustancia «R 3,5» de Curie y Savić (precursora de la fisión)
- Date
- 1937-1938 · confidence high
- Place
- Institut du Radium, Paris, France
- Credited to
- Irène Joliot-Curie and Pavle Savić
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
On irradiating uranium with neutrons they found a product with a 3.5-hour half-life and lanthanum-like properties. They could not interpret it, but Hahn and Strassmann identified it months later as barium, which led to the recognition of fission.
Result published in 1938 in Comptes Rendus and in the Journal de Physique. Savić was born in Odessa and is a figure at the Vinča Institute in Belgrade. It is a piece of the process that led to fission; the discovery itself is not attributed to him.
What it led to
- identification of nuclear fission (Hahn, Strassmann, Meitner, Frisch)
- studies of transuranic elements with neutrons