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Otto Hahn

German chemist and physicist (1879-1968)

  • Fame64.5
  • Momentum0.0
  • Scientists rank#187
Source-basedFalling
  • Fame64.5
  • Momentum0.0
  • Scientists rank#187
  • Wikipedia18K
Lived 1879–1968, aged 89Germany
GermanyGermanyScientistsScientist
  • Wikipedia
    87 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1879–1968
    Aged 89
  • Awards
    26
    recognised works
Summary
Updated 2026-06-21

The chemist who split the atom — and collected a Nobel Prize alone for work done with a partner who had to flee Nazi Germany. Hahn's 1938 discovery of nuclear fission opened the age of reactors and bombs, but the recognition never included Lise Meitner, the physicist beside him when the breakthrough came.

Biography

About

Born 8 March 1879, Hahn earned his doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1901, then trained under William Ramsay in London and Ernest Rutherford in Montreal, discovering new radioactive isotopes. Back in Germany by 1906, he set up in a basement woodworking shop at the University of Berlin and began a decades-long collaboration with Austrian physicist Lise Meitner. Between 1934 and 1938, working with Fritz Strassmann, they bombarded uranium with neutrons — the experiments that revealed nuclear fission. Meitner, Jewish, fled Germany in 1938; Hahn stayed, catalogued fission products during…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Otto Hahn

Otto Hahn
said
In postwar Germany, Otto Hahn became the most revered elder statesman of what had once been Europe's proudest scientific establishment.
— TIME Magazine, New York, August 9th, 1968.
Otto Hahn
said
Professor Meitner stated that nuclear fission could be attributed to chemistry. I have to make a slight correction.
— Prof. Dr. Fritz Strassmann in the same interview with the German television, ARD, March 8, 1959.
Otto Hahn
said
Otto Hahn is a figure of world history. But he possesses none of the attributes of the traditional luminaries in history books.
— The Observer, London, June 9th, 1957.
Otto Hahn
said
Never has a Nobelprize-winner been in the outward sense so absent at a Nobel festival as Professor Hahn.
— Prof. Dr. Axel Hugo Theorell at the Nobelprize ceremony, Stockholm, December 10th, 1945.
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
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By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
64.5
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical24.6
Now attention16.2
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
—
Country rank
—
Category rank
#187
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence