Miért nem kapnak fizikai Nobel-díjat az atommaghasadásért? – A fizika világa

Miért nem kapnak fizikai Nobel-díjat az atommaghasadásért? – A fizika világa

Időbélyeg: 2. október 2023. 5:00

Otto Hahn és Lise Meitner fotója
Az együttműködők: Otto Hahn és Lise Meitner 1912-ben, néhány évvel 30 éves munkakapcsolatuk után.

Ezen a nyáron az elméleti fizikus Robert Oppenheimer a filmnek köszönhetően széles körben elnyerte a közönség érdeklődését Oppenheimer. A valószínűtlen kasszasiker Oppenheimer életét részletezi, miközben ő vezette az atombomba kifejlesztését, és azt a konfliktust, amelyet nem tudott elmenekülni, miután ledobták.

Tomorrow, the winner(s) of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced and that has led me to wonder why Oppenheimer never won a prize (he was nominated three times). Indeed, a further review of the Nobel prize archives reveals an even more puzzling question: why has there never been a physics Nobel given for the discovery of nuclear fission? Surely, the discovery of such a phenomenon warrants this recognition.

A válasz Otto Hahn történeteiben és Lise meitner, német radiokémikus, illetve osztrák-svéd atomfizikus, aki a nácizmus és a második világháború felemelkedését élte és dolgozta át.

Kiegészítő kollégák

The pair worked closely throughout the first decades of the 20th century, isolating and studying radioactive nuclei. Their complementary working relationship shone in the years following Enrico Fermi’s discovery in 1934 that neutron bombardment could be used to transform one element into another – work that earned Fermi the 1938 physics Nobel.

However, in 1938 Meitner – an ethnically Jewish woman – was forced to flee Nazi Germany and escaped to Sweden. There she worked at a facility that had just been set up by the physics Nobel laureate Manne Siegbahn. Meitner did not have funding to do research in wartime Sweden and some scholars suggest that her presence was resented by Siegbahn, and that he attempted to block her professional career in Sweden.

Eközben Németországban Hahn egy új asszisztenssel, Fritz Strassmannal folytatta munkáját. Abban az évben Hahn és Strassman konzultált Meitnerrel az urán neutronbombázásának rejtélyes termékeiről, ami túl könnyű elemet eredményezett ahhoz, hogy bármilyen ismert radioaktív bomlási folyamat eredménye legyen. A történetek szerint 1938 karácsony estéjén Meitner és unokaöccse, Otto Frisch (aki később Oppenheimerrel a Manhattan Projekten dolgozott) arra a következtetésre jutott, hogy az uránatom kettéhasadt.

Különleges papírok

Hahn and Strassman published their experimental findings in the journal Naturwissenschaften in January the next year. Meitner and Frisch published their theoretical interpretation of these findings separately in Természet just a couple weeks later. These papers were distinct to their disciplines: chemistry and physics respectively.

In this situation, who would you say discovered nuclear fission – the people who performed the experiment or the people who interpreted its results? Some scholars suggest that Hahn was keen to frame the discovery of nuclear fission as a chemical discovery, not a physical one. Perhaps this was out of self-preservation, as collaboration with a Jewish woman would have ruined Hahn’s career in Nazi Germany. Fission might protect Hahn and his laboratory during those tumultuous times.

In 1944 it was announced that the Nobel Prize for Chemistry would be awarded to Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission and no-one else, notably excluding Meitner, Strassman and Frisch. Prominent physicists, including Niels Bohr, Max Planck and Arthur Compton, protested Meitner’s exclusion and nominated her for the physics prize in the years that followed but to no avail.

So why was there no Nobel Prize for Physics awarded for fission in the subsequent years? In the case of Meitner, some scholars suggest that Siegbahn’s animosity prevented her from winning. As a leading Swedish physicist, he would have held considerable sway over who was given the prize.

És ott vannak az atombombák, amelyeket 1945-ben Japánra dobtak, és 226,000 1949 embert öltek meg. Mindkét eszköz az atommaghasadáson alapult, amelyet egyre negatívabb fényben láttak, ahogy a teljes nukleáris háború veszélye valóra vált XNUMX-ben, amikor a Szovjetunió kipróbálta az első bombát.

In the 1950s several German nuclear scientists, including Hahn, signed the Gottingen Manifesto declaring they would not participate in arming West Germany with nuclear weapons. They were ready to move past the subject, and perhaps the Nobel committee was ready to do the same.

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