Disintegration of uranium by neutrons: a new type of nuclear reaction. Offprint from Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3615, 11 February 1939

Beschreibung

THE DISCOVERY OF NUCLEAR FISSION PMM 422b . First edition, extremely rare offprint, of the discovery of nuclear fission, a process which had been observed by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann the previous year but for which they were unable to provide an explanation. "In the late 1930s, a series of experiments showed that bombarding uranium with neutrons produced several new radioactive elements, which were assumed to have atomic numbers near to that of uranium (Z = 92). This assumption followed naturally from the prevailing view of nuclear decay, which involved the emission, through tunnelling, of only small charged particles (? and ?). How then did one explain the formation of an element which was, as far as could be determined, identical to barium (Z = 56), and thus much smaller than uranium?" (Nature Physics Portal) "Experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassmann were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist who had fled to Copenhagen to escape religious persecution. She and her nephew, O. R. Frisch, working in Niels Bohr s laboratory, found the true explanation of these phenomena. The interpolation of a neutron into the nucleus of a uranium atom caused it to divide into two parts and to release energy amounting to about 200,000,000 electron volts. This process bore such a close similarity to the division of a living cell that Frisch suggested the use of the term fission to describe it" (PMM). "When Frisch returned to Copenhagen with the news, Bohr immediately exclaimed Oh, what idiots we have all been! Oh, but this is wonderful! Bohr publicised the discovery at a physics conference in the US later in January 1939, and soon others were confirming Hahn and Strassman s results and Meitner and Frisch s calculations. It was quickly recognised that fission of uranium s 235 isotope would release further neutrons, possibly starting a chain reaction. On the eve of another war, the nuclear age had begun" (Sutton). The first nuclear reactor became operational in 1942 and the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. Hahn was the sole recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei". The official Nobel citation noted only that "Otto Hahn's long-time colleague, Lise Meitner, and her nephew, Otto Frisch, tackled the problem from a theoretical standpoint and proved that the uranium nucleus had been split". No copy on OCLC. ABPC/RBH list a single copy (Sotheby s, 16 November 2001, lot 126). Provenance: Robert Leroy Platzman (signature on title page). Platzman (1918-73) was a chemist at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory during World War II, the research group responsible for the first successful nuclear reactor in 1942. Its primary role was to design a viable method for plutonium production that could fuel a nuclear reaction. Platzman, together with 70 other scientists from Chicago, signed the letter sent on July 17, 1945 by Leo Szilard to urge President Truman not to use the atomic bomb against Japan. He was involved in establishing and publishing the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal founded by Manhattan Project scientists who "could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work" (Atomic Heritage Foundation). "In December 1938, over Christmas vacation, physicists Lise Meitner (1878-1968) and Otto Frisch (1904-79) made a startling discovery that would immediately revolutionize nuclear physics and lead to the atomic bomb. Trying to explain a puzzling finding made by nuclear chemist Otto Hahn (1879-1968) in Berlin, Meitner and Frisch realized that something previously thought impossible was actually happening: that a uranium nucleus had split in two. "Lise Meitner was born in Vienna in 1878. She grew up in an intellectual family, and studied physics at the University of Vienna, receiving a doctorate in 1906. As a woman, the only position available to her at that time in Vienna was as a schoolteacher, so she went to Berlin in 1907 in searc.

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Bibliografische Details

Titel

Disintegration of uranium by neutrons: a new type of nuclear reaction. Offprint from Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3615, 11 February 1939

Verlag

Macmillan, [London

Erscheinungsjahr

1939

Auflage

First edition.

Signiert

Signatur des Verfassers

Verkäuferkataloge

• Printing and the Mind of Man
• Atomic Physics, Quantum Theory