OTTO HAHN (1879–1968)
Life
Otto Hahn was born on 8 March 1879 in Frankfurt am Main. He studied chemistry at the universities of Marburg and Munich, where he received his doctorate. After finishing his studies he worked abroad, first in London in the laboratory of William Ramsay and later in Canada with Ernest Rutherford. There he began to focus intensively on the study of radioactivity.
After returning to Germany he worked in Berlin at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Together with the physicist Lise Meitner and the chemist Fritz Strassmann he conducted research on radioactive elements and their decay products.
Discovery of Nuclear Fission
In 1938 Hahn and Strassmann discovered during their experiments that when uranium is bombarded with neutrons lighter elements are produced. This phenomenon was later explained as nuclear fission and became one of the foundations of modern nuclear physics.
For this discovery Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944.
Hahn and Jáchymov
Otto Hahn visited Jáchymov during a scientific meeting devoted to radioactivity and its application in spa medicine. He came to the town together with the Czech physicist František Běhounek, one of the leading representatives of Czechoslovak atomic physics.
Death
Otto Hahn died on 28 July 1968 in Göttingen.
