Otto Hahn, Discoverer of Nuclear Fission, Dies

Physics Today ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 101-102
Author(s):  
Werner Heisenberg
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Otto Hahn

scholarly journals Otto Hahn, 1879-1968

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 279-313 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
German Family ◽  
Otto Hahn ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Village

Otto Hahn, one of the founders of radiochemistry and co-discoverer of nuclear fission, was born on 8 March 1879 in a small house in the Bockgasse, Frankfurt-on-the-Main. His father, Heinrich Hahn, was a glazier by trade and came from the village of Gundersheim near Worms. The family derived from Rhenish peasant stock but some members had adopted professional careers, becoming either teachers or doctors. Heinrich settled in Frankfurt in 1866 where he met a young widow named Charlotte Stutzmann. They were married in 1875 and had three sons, Heiner, Julius and Otto, besides Charlotte’s son Karl from her former marriage. Charlotte belonged to a North German family of some distinction; one of Otto’s cousins, Friedrich Thimme was a historian who became Director of the Landesbibliotek in Hanover, and another, Heinz von Trützschler, was a member of the Foreign Service and later became Ambassador in Dublin.

The New World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger H. Stuewer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
New World ◽  
Liquid Drop ◽  
Journal Club ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Liquid Drop Model ◽  
Lise Meitner ◽  
Otto Hahn ◽  
Léon Rosenfeld

On December 19, 1938, Otto Hahn wrote to Lise Meitner in Stockholm, asking her if she could propose some “fantastic explanation” for his and Fritz Strassmann’s finding of barium when bombarding uranium with neutrons. She and Otto Robert Frisch found such an explanation for what he called “nuclear fission” over the Christmas holidays, based on Gamow’s liquid-drop model of the nucleus. Bohr was astonished by this, but in 1936 he had speculated that the uranium nucleus would just explode. He, his son Erik, and his associate Léon Rosenfeld then took a ship to New York, arriving on January 16, 1939. Rosenfeld reported the discovery of fission that evening to the Princeton physics journal club. On January 26, physicists everywhere learned about this stunning discovery when Bohr and Fermi reported it at a conference in Washington, D.C. Physicists entered the New World of Nuclear Physics, taking Humanity with them.

Parity violation in nuclear fission

1980 ◽  
Vol 131 (7) ◽  
pp. 329 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.V. Danilyan
Keyword(s):  
Parity Violation ◽  
Nuclear Fission

Proposed Solutions to Achieve Nuclear Fusion

Engevista ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 1496
Author(s):  
Relly Victoria Virgil Petrescu ◽  
Raffaella Aversa ◽  
Antonio Apicella ◽  
Florian Ion Petrescu
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Nuclear Reactions ◽  
Nuclear Fusion ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Light Nuclei ◽  
Fast Neutrons ◽  
Fusion Reactions ◽  
Nuclear Fusion Reactions ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Fusion Products

Despite research carried out around the world since the 1950s, no industrial application of fusion to energy production has yet succeeded, apart from nuclear weapons with the H-bomb, since this application does not aims at containing and controlling the reaction produced. There are, however, some other less mediated uses, such as neutron generators. The fusion of light nuclei releases enormous amounts of energy from the attraction between the nucleons due to the strong interaction (nuclear binding energy). Fusion it is with nuclear fission one of the two main types of nuclear reactions applied. The mass of the new atom obtained by the fusion is less than the sum of the masses of the two light atoms. In the process of fusion, part of the mass is transformed into energy in its simplest form: heat. This loss is explained by the Einstein known formula E=mc2. Unlike nuclear fission, the fusion products themselves (mainly helium 4) are not radioactive, but when the reaction is used to emit fast neutrons, they can transform the nuclei that capture them into isotopes that some of them can be radioactive. In order to be able to start and to be maintained with the success the nuclear fusion reactions, it is first necessary to know all this reactions very well. This means that it is necessary to know both the main reactions that may take place in a nuclear reactor and their sense and effects. The main aim is to choose and coupling the most convenient reactions, forcing by technical means for their production in the reactor. Taking into account that there are a multitude of possible variants, it is necessary to consider in advance the solutions that we consider them optimal. The paper takes into account both variants of nuclear fusion, and cold and hot. For each variant will be mentioned the minimum necessary specifications.

Delayed nuclear fission

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 666 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. I. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Fission

The Age of Innocence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger H. Stuewer
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Nuclear Reactions ◽  
Alpha Decay ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Lise Meitner ◽  
Artificial Radioactivity ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Nuclear Disintegration ◽  
Quantum Mechanical Theory

Nuclear physics emerged as the dominant field in experimental and theoretical physics between 1919 and 1939, the two decades between the First and Second World Wars. Milestones were Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of artificial nuclear disintegration (1919), George Gamow’s and Ronald Gurney and Edward Condon’s simultaneous quantum-mechanical theory of alpha decay (1928), Harold Urey’s discovery of deuterium (the deuteron), James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron, Carl Anderson’s discovery of the positron, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton’s invention of their eponymous linear accelerator, and Ernest Lawrence’s invention of the cyclotron (1931–2), Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie’s discovery and confirmation of artificial radioactivity (1934), Enrico Fermi’s theory of beta decay based on Wolfgang Pauli’s neutrino hypothesis and Fermi’s discovery of the efficacy of slow neutrons in nuclear reactions (1934), Niels Bohr’s theory of the compound nucleus and Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner’s theory of nucleus+neutron resonances (1936), and Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch’s interpretation of nuclear fission, based on Gamow’s liquid-drop model of the nucleus (1938), which Frisch confirmed experimentally (1939). These achievements reflected the idiosyncratic personalities of the physicists who made them; they were shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked; and they were buffeted by the profound social and political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the greatest intellectual migration in history, which encompassed some of the most gifted experimental and theoretical nuclear physicists in the world.

scholarly journals Improvements to the macroscopic-microscopic approach of nuclear fission

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Verriere ◽  
Matthew Ryan Mumpower
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Microscopic Approach

scholarly journals Rapid imaging of special nuclear materials for nuclear nonproliferation and terrorism prevention

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (21) ◽  
pp. eabg3032
Author(s):  
Jana Petrović ◽  
Alf Göök ◽  
Bo Cederwall
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Imaging Modality ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Nuclear Materials ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Fast Time ◽  
Gamma Emission ◽  
Special Nuclear Materials

We introduce a neutron-gamma emission tomography (NGET) technique for rapid detection, three-dimensional imaging, and characterization of special nuclear materials like weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. The technique is adapted from fundamental nuclear physics research and represents a previously unexplored approach to the detection and imaging of small quantities of these materials. The method is demonstrated on a radiation portal monitor prototype system based on fast organic scintillators, measuring the characteristic fast time and energy correlations between particles emitted in nuclear fission processes. The use of these correlations in real time in conjunction with modern machine learning techniques provides unprecedented imaging efficiency and high spatial resolution. This imaging modality addresses global security threats from terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It also provides enhanced capabilities for addressing different nuclear accident scenarios and for environmental radiological surveying.

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