On December 19, 1938, nuclear fission was discovered

At the end of 1938, on the brink of World War II, a team of German researchers at the Kaiser Wilhem Institut in Berlin, made up of Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, Lisa Meitner and Otto Frisch, interpreted the phenomenon of nuclear fission, through the identification of the element barium as a consequence of the cleavage of the uranium nucleus.

The first studies on nuclear fission were carried out by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, based on the results obtained by the Joliot-Curie couple, who, through very careful analysis, found an element with an intermediate atomic number in a sample of uranium bombarded with neutrons.

Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch were able to deduce that by bombarding uranium with neutrons, the uranium captured a neutron and split into two fragments, emitting a large amount of energy. Nuclear fission had been discovered. However, only Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for this discovery.

The study of nuclear fission is considered part of the fields of nuclear chemistry and physics.

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