A discovery that changed the world
In 1938, in a Berlin laboratory, Otto Hahn and Strassmann did an experiment. By hitting uranium4 with neutrons5, they saw that it split into lighter elements. They had just witnessed nuclear fission3, a process where an atomic nucleus breaks into two, releasing a lot of energy.
The key role of Lise Meitner
Otto Hahn, her former colleague and friend, sent her the results of his experiment. She was the one who explained the phenomenon: the uranium4 nucleus had split in two, releasing a huge amount of energy, as described by Einstein's famous equation, E = mc².
Nuclear fission3 is one of the turning points in 20th-century science, the result of a collaboration between chemistry and physics, involving Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.
"Science humbles us in the face of how much there still is to understand."
—Lise Meitner