Otto Hahn was born on March 8, 1879 to a rich entrepreneur named Heinrich Hahn and his wife, Charlotte Hahn in Frankfurt am Main. He had three siblings: Julius Hahn, Heiner Hahn, and Karl Hahn. At the age of 15, he started conducting experiments in his laundry room and announced his intention to become an industrial chemist two years later. Even though his father wanted Otto to be an architect, Otto wanted to be a chemist, and was supported by his prosperous parents. In 1901, he received his doctorate at the University of Marburg. He went to England in 1904, primarily to learn English, and worked at the University College in London with Sir William Ramsay, who was interested in radioactivity. When he was working on a crude radium preparation that Ramsay had asked Otto to purify, he showed that a new substance that was radioactive, which he called radiothorium was present. Encouraged by Ramsay, who thought highly of him, he decided to study radioactivity rather than industry. Helped by Ramsay, he obtained a post at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Before taking it up, he spent many months in Montreal with Ernest Rutherford, to gain more experience with radioactivity. After returning to Germany in 1906, he was joined by an Austrian-born physicist named Lise Meitner. Five years later the team moved to the new …show more content…
When he heard about the Hiroshima bombing, he felt guilty, and in 1958, he and Albert Schweizer signed the Pauling Appeal to the United Nations, which called for the testing of nuclear weapons to be stopped. He valued science, and radioactivity. He discovered many, many radioactive elements, the first example of a nuclear isomer, and the process of nuclear fission, and is widely regarded as the father of nuclear fission. Otto Hahn was not a supporter of the Nazi prejudice against the Jews. His partner, Lise Meitner, was a Jew, and he also helped some Jews escape from