Biography Fritz Strassman

Friedrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Strassmann on February 22. He attended secondary school in Oberrealschule currently Leibniz-hymnasium in Dusseldorf. Even in his youth, he showed great interest in chemistry. After graduation, in the year he received a doctoral degree in the field of physical chemistry. In the same year, he entered the Institute of Chemistry of Kaiser Wilhelm in Berlin now the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, for the scholarship, which was proposed by the director of the institute O.

at the Institute of Chemistry Strassman, worked together with O. Han and L. Maitner, engaged in radioactivity studies. In the city, intensively began to engage in the irradiation of elements neutrons in the E. group, it was found that other elements were formed. However, experimental results also allowed another interpretation. The German chemist Ida Nodddak proposed an interpretation of the experiments of the Fermi group.

In a short article published in the German journal of applied chemistry, she wrote: "It could be assumed that when shelling heavy nuclei neutrons, these nuclei decompose into several large fragments that may be isotopes of famous elements, but not to be neighbors of elements that are exposed to rays." Thus, for the first time, an assumption was made about the existence of a new type of nuclear reactions - the reaction of division.

In the middle of the X Gan, Meitner and Strassman began to shell the uranium atoms with neutron. I was forced to leave Germany in Matner. Gan and Strassman continued their research without her. The work of Nodddak, apparently, was unknown to them, and they stubbornly tried to find heavy elements near uranium. However, traces of a much lighter barium were constantly found in radiation products.

In December, G. Gan and Strassman sent an article in NaturwissensChaften, which reported that they discovered barium after a bombardment of uranium neutron. At the same time, the results were sent to Matner to Stockholm. Matner and her nephew Otto Frish to interpret these results as nuclear division.

Frisch confirmed this experimentally. In the year, Gan received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the opening of nuclear division. In the year, Strassman became a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Mainz, and in the city later he founded the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. Strassman developed a methodology for determining the age of minerals, which is successfully used in geology.

Strassman was awarded the Enriko Fermi Prize in the year for his contribution to the discovery of nuclear division along with Matner and Han. The International Astronomical Union called an asteroid in his honor: Strassmann.