Fritz Strassmann

Born on 22 February 1902 in Boppard, Germany, Friedrich (Fritz) Strassmann was a German physical chemist who, along with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, discovered nuclear fission . Strassmann studied physical chemistry at the Technical University of Hannover, where he received his doctorate in 1929. He then joined Hahn and Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin. Together, the three bombarded uranium with neutrons to study the radioactive products that formed. In 1938 Meitner was forced to flee to Sweden because of the anti-Jewish laws being enacted in Nazi Germany. However, she continued to collaborate with Strassmann and Hahn, who achieved the fission of uranium nuclei by irradiation later that year. They also found that the elements formed from the fission were lighter than the original uranium nucleus and surmised that the missing mass had been converted into energy. After the war, in 1946, Strassmann became a professor of inorganic and nuclear chemistry at the University of Mainz, where he worked until his retirement in 1970. Although Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission, Strassmann, Meitner, and Hahn shared the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966 in recognition of their nuclear fission research. Strassmann died in Mainz on 22 April 1980. (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Frau Irmgard Strassmann)

Date in History: 22 February 1902