![]() ![]() ![]() Meitner and her nephew Frisch theorised, and then proved, that the uranium nucleus had been split and published their findings in Nature. They reported their findings by mail to Meitner in Sweden, who a few months earlier had fled Nazi Germany. Hahn suggested a bursting of the nucleus, but he was unsure of what the physical basis for the results were. Hahn and Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin bombarded uranium with slow neutrons and discovered that barium had been produced. Hahn was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Scientists already knew about alpha decay and beta decay, but fission assumed great importance because the discovery that a nuclear chain reaction was possible led to the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The fission process often produces gamma rays and releases a very large amount of energy, even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei and often other particles. Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. The nuclear reaction theorised by Meitner and Frisch starting the nuclear chain reaction predicted by Hahn and Strassmann. ![]()
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