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Otto Hahn: The Father Of Chemistry

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Stuart Wire Hellard Pre-Ap Honors Chemistry 11/29/2015 Otto Hahn Otto Hahn was a German chemist that lived from 1879-1968. He discovered many important things including nuclear fission. He won the Nobel Peace Prize once and was nominated for the award several times. He is referred to as the Father of Nuclear Chemistry. Otto was born in Frankfurt Germany on March 8, 1879 and he died on July 28, 1968. Otto had three siblings; Karl, Heiner, and Julius. Otto’s father and mother were Glasbau Hahn and Charlotte Hahn. Hahn had a fascination with chemistry from a young age. He knew that he wanted to be an industrial chemist despite his father’s wish for him to be an architect. Otto attended the local secondary school in Frankfurt. …show more content…

There he worked with Emil Fischer. The two would work at the University of Berlin. Otto had very limited resources while working with Emil, those being a woodworking shop as their lab. While working in the woodworking shop Hahn discovered mesothorium I, mesothorium II, and ionium4. Mesothorium I was a very valuable discovery, as it could be used as a treatment for radiation and was much cheaper than the manufactured alternative. For the discovery of mesothorium I Hahn was elected for the Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry. Otto was now qualified to be a teacher at the University of Berlin because of a habitational thesis he completed in 1907. At the same time Lisa Meitner moved to Berlin, beginning a lifelong friendship between the …show more content…

Uranium Z, later named protactinium 234, the first example of nuclear isomerism2. Nuclear isomerism is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “the relation of two or more compounds, radicals, or ions that are composed of the same kinds and numbers of atoms, but differ from each other in structural arrangement (structural isomerism) as with CH3 OCH 3, and CH 3 CH 2 OH, or in the arrangement of their atoms in space and, therefore, in one or more properties”. Once again Otto was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times, but still had not

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