Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discoveries of nuclear fission and protactinium.
Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered isotopes of the radioactive elements radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Leo Szilard was a Hungarian-born physicist, biologist and inventor who made numerous important discoveries in nuclear physics and the biological sciences. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and patented the idea in 1936. In late 1939 he wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb, and then in 1944 wrote the Szilard petition asking President Truman to demonstrate the bomb without dropping it on civilians. According to György Marx, he was one of the Hungarian scientists known as The Martians.
Friedrich Wilhelm Strassmann was a German chemist who, with Otto Hahn in December 1938, identified the element barium as a product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. Their observation was the key piece of evidence necessary to identify the previously unknown phenomenon of nuclear fission, as was subsequently recognized and published by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch. In their second publication on nuclear fission in February 1939, Strassmann and Hahn predicted the existence and liberation of additional neutrons during the fission process, opening up the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction.
In magnetic resonance, a spin echo or Hahn echo is the refocusing of spin magnetisation by a pulse of resonant electromagnetic radiation. Modern nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) make use of this effect.
The European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) is a multi-disciplinary research facility currently under construction in Lund, Sweden. Its Data Management and Software Centre (DMSC) is co-located with DTU in Lyngby, Denmark. Its 13 European contributor countries are partners in the construction and operation of the ESS. The ESS is scheduled to begin its scientific user program in 2027, when the construction phase is set to be completed. The ESS will assist scientists in the tasks of observing and understanding basic atomic structures and forces, which are more challenging to do with other neutron sources in terms of lengths and time scales. The research facility is located near the MAX IV Laboratory, which conducts synchrotron radiation research. The construction of the facility began in the summer of 2014 and the first science results are planned for 2027.
A neutron supermirror is a highly polished, layered material used to reflect neutron beams. Supermirrors are a special case of multi-layer neutron reflectors with varying layer thicknesses.
Herbert Lawrence Anderson was an American nuclear physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago.
G. Norris Glasoe was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the Columbia University team which was the first in the United States to verify the European discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium via neutron bombardment. During World War II, he worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was a physicist and administrator at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Eugene Theodore Booth, Jr. was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the historic Columbia University team which made the first demonstration of nuclear fission in the United States. During the Manhattan Project, he worked on gaseous diffusion for isotope separation. He was the director of the design, construction, and operation project for the 385-Mev synchrocyclotron at the Nevis Laboratories, the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, and dean of graduate studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. Booth was the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, in Italy.
Gerhard Hoffmann was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club.
Gottfried Freiherr von Droste (1908–1992), a.k.a. Gottfried Freiherr von Droste zu Vischering-Padberg, was a German physical chemist. He worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (KWIC). He independently predicted that nuclear fission would release a large amount of energy. During World War II, he participated in the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranverein. In the latter years of the war, he worked at the Reich's University of Strassburg. After the war, he worked at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Federal Physical and Technical Institute and also held a position at the Technical University of Braunschweig.
A neutron research facility is most commonly a big laboratory operating a large-scale neutron source that provides thermal neutrons to a suite of research instruments. The neutron source usually is a research reactor or a spallation source. In some cases, a smaller facility will provide high energy neutrons using existing neutron generator technologies.
Klaus Blaum is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.
Françoise Combes is a French astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a professor at the Collège de France where she has been the chair of Galaxies and cosmology since 2014.
Science and technology is one of Hungary's most developed sectors. The country spent 1.4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on civil research and development in 2015, which is the 25th-highest ratio in the world. Hungary ranks 32nd among the most innovative countries in the Bloomberg Innovation Index, standing before Hong Kong, Iceland or Malta. Hungary was ranked 36th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.
Werner Nahm is a German theoretical physicist. He has made contributions to mathematical physics and fundamental theoretical physics.
Nicola Ann Spaldin FRS is professor of materials science at ETH Zurich, known for her pioneering research on multiferroics.
Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei and often other particles. The fission process often produces gamma rays and releases a very large amount of energy, even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Scientists already knew about alpha decay and beta decay, but fission assumed great importance because the discovery that a nuclear chain reaction was possible led to the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Hahn was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission.
