Fritz Strassmann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fritz (Friedrich Wilhelm) Strassman (February 22, 1902 - April 22, 1980) was a German chemist who, along with Otto Hahn, discovered the nuclear fission of uranium in 1938.
Born in Boppard, he began his chemistry studies in 1920 at the Technical University of Hannover and earned his Ph.D. in 1929. He did his Ph.D. work about the solubility of iodine gaseous carbonic acid. Straßmann started an academic career because the employment situation in the chemical industry was much worse than at the universities at that time.
Straßmann subsequently worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem, firstly from 1929. (and, from 1948 to 1953 at its successor, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz). His expertise in analytical chemistry was employed by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in their investigation of the products of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. In December 1938 he discovered as close collaborator of Otto Hahn the neutron-induced fission of uranium. He studied also methods for geological age determinations via radioactive decay.
In 1946 he became professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Mainz and 1948 director of the newly established Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Later he founded the Institute for Nuclear Chemistry.
In 1957 he was one of the Göttinger 18, who protested against the idea of the Adenauer government to force the Western German army with tactical nuclear weapons.
In 1945 Strassmann did not share with Otto Hahn the 1944 Nobel Prize for their works on nuclear fission, neither did Lisa Meitner nor Otto Robert Frisch.
President Johnson honored Hahn, Meitner and Sraßmann 1966 with the Enrico Fermi Award. The International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after him: 19136 Strassmann.
He died in Mainz.
[edit] References
- Fritz Strassmann: "Über die Löslichkeit von Jod in gasförmiger Kohlensäure", Zeitschrift f. physikal. Chemie. Abt. A., Bd. 143 (1929) and Ph.D. thesis Technical University of Hannover, 1930
- Fritz Krafft: Im Schatten der Sensation. Leben und Wirken von Fritz Straßmann; Verlag Chemie, 1981
