Discovery of the nuclear isomer
Descubrimiento del isómero nuclear
- Date
- 1921 · confidence high
- Place
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, Berlin-Dahlem, Germany
- Credited to
- Otto Hahn
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Otto Hahn identified the first known nuclear isomer, the uranium X2/uranium Z pair (today protactinium-234m/protactinium-234): two nuclei with the same number of protons and neutrons but different energies and half-lives, revealing the existence of long-lived excited nuclear states.
What it led to
- The concept of a metastable state or nuclear isomer in nuclear physics
- Hahn's later research leading to the discovery of nuclear fission (1938)