Nuclear fission
Fisión nuclear
- Date
- 1938 · confidence high
- Place
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, Berlin-Dahlem, Germany
- Credited to
- Otto Hahn; Fritz Strassmann; Lise Meitner; Otto Frisch
- People
- 👤 Fritz Strassmann1902–1980👤 Lise Meitner1878–1968👤 Otto Hahn1879–1968👤 Otto Robert Frisch1904–1979
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
By bombarding uranium with neutrons, Hahn and Strassmann find barium: the nucleus has split in two. Meitner and Frisch, exiled in Sweden, explain it with the liquid-drop model and calculate the energy released (200 MeV) with E = mc².
Meitner, intellectual co-author of the work, was excluded from the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded only to Hahn. Frisch coined the term 'fission' in Kungälv (Sweden) at Christmas 1938. Merged with 'Nuclear fission of uranium (radiochemical identification of barium)' (duplicate, 23-09-2026).
What it led to
- Chain reaction and nuclear reactor (1942)
- Atomic bomb (1945) and the nuclear age
- Nuclear power generation
- Proliferation and nuclear geopolitics
- Nuclear energy
- Nuclear weapons
- Actinide and transuranium chemistry
- Medical radioisotopes
Built on
- Discovery of the nuclear isomer1921
- The neutron1932
- Artificial radioactivity1934
- Curie and Savić's 'R 3.5' substance (precursor of fission)1937-1938
- Fermi's experiments with slow neutrons (1934)
- Irène Joliot-Curie and Savitch's work (1938)
- Bohr's liquid-drop model
- neutron (Chadwick, 1932)
- Fermi's uranium experiments
Made possible
- Controlled nuclear chain reaction (Chicago Pile-1)1942
- Nuclear reactor (Chicago Pile-1)1942
- Atomic bomb1945
- RDS-1, first Soviet atomic bomb29 de agosto de 1949
- Nuclear weapons
- Nuclear naval propulsion
- nuclear reactor (Fermi, 1942)