Otto Hahn - Göttingen, Germany - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Otto Hahn, OBE, ForMemRS (8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist and pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery and the radiochemical proof of nuclear fission. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry.

Hahn was an opponent of Jewish persecution by the Nazi Party and, after World War II, he became a passionate campaigner against the use of nuclear energy as a weapon. He served as the last President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) in 1946 and as the founding President of the Max Planck Society (MPG) from 1948 to 1960. Considered by many to be a model for scholarly excellence and personal integrity, he became one of the most influential and respected citizens of the new Federal Republic of Germany.

Source Wikipedia

Description: Hahn was the youngest son of Heinrich Hahn (1845–1922), a prosperous glazier and entrepreneur ("Glasbau Hahn"), and Charlotte Hahn, née Giese (1845–1905). Together with his brothers Karl, Heiner and Julius, Otto was raised in a sheltered environment. At the age of 15, he began to take a special interest in chemistry, and carried out simple experiments in the laundry room of the family home. His father wanted Otto to study architecture, as he had built or acquired several residential and business properties, but Otto persuaded him that his ambition was to become an industrial chemist. In 1897, after taking his Abitur at the Klinger Oberrealschule in Frankfurt, Hahn began to study chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Marburg. His subsidiary subjects were physics and philosophy. Hahn joined the Students' Association of Natural Sciences and Medicine, a student fraternity and a forerunner of today's "Landsmannschaft Nibelungia" (Coburger Convent der akademischen Landsmannschaften und Turnerschaften). He spent his third and fourth semester studying under Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich. In 1901, Hahn received his doctorate in Marburg for a dissertation entitled On Bromine Derivates of Isoeugenol, a topic in classical organic chemistry. After completing his one-year military service, the young chemist returned to the University of Marburg, where for two years he worked as assistant to his doctoral supervisor, Geheimrat Professor Theodor Zincke. Hahn's intention had been to work in industry. With this in mind, and also to improve his knowledge of English, he took up a post at University College London in 1904, working under Sir William Ramsay, known for having discovered the inert gases. Here Hahn worked on radiochemistry, at that time a very new field. In early 1905, in the course of his work with salts of radium, Hahn discovered a new substance he called radiothorium (thorium-228), which at that time was believed to be a new radioactive element. (In fact, it was a still undiscovered isotope of the known element thorium. The term isotope was only coined in 1913, by the British chemist Frederick Soddy). Ramsay was very enthused when yet another new element was found in his institute, and he intended to announce the discovery in a correspondingly suitable way. In accordance with tradition this should be done before the committee of the venerable Royal Society. At the session of the Royal Society on the 16 March 1905 Ramsay communicated Hahn's discovery of radiothorium, and even the press was interested. The Daily Telegraph informed its readers: "A NEW ELEMENT - Very soon the scientific papers will be agog with a new discovery which has been added to the many brilliant triumphs of Gower Street. Dr. Otto Hahn, who is working at University College, has discovered a new radioactive element, extracted from a mineral from Ceylon, named Thorianite, and possibly, it is conjectured, the substance which renders thorium radioactive. Its activity is at least 250,000 times as great as that of thorium, weight for weight. It gives off a gas (generally called an emanation), identical with the radioactive emanation from thorium. Another theory of deep interest is that it is the possible source of a radioactive element possibly stronger in radioactivity than radium itself, and capable of producing all the curious effects which are known of radium up to the present. - The discoverer read a paper on the subject to the Royal Society last week, and this should rank, when published, among the most original of recent contributions to scientific literature." For the first time the name of Otto Hahn was mentioned in connection with radium research, and his "New radioactive Element, which evolves Thorium Emanation" (so the original title) was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in the issue of 24 March 1905 (76 A, pages 115-117). It was the first of more than 250 scientific publications of Otto Hahn in the f Date of birth: 03/08/1879 Date of death: 07/28/1968 Area of notoriety: Science/Technology Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link] Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Not listed

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Date Logged Log   05/24/2018 Chaos Chris visited it