more photos (1)

Otto Robert Frisch’s Followers (3)

Otto Robert Frisch

Born

in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Austria

October 01, 1904

Died

September 22, 1979

Website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Robert_Frisch

Genre

Science, Physics, Nuclear Physics

Influences

Niels Bohr, Fritz Strassmann, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Rudolf Peierls ...more

edit data

Otto Robert Frisch FRS (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrian-British physicist. With his German-British collaborator Rudolf Peierls he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940.

Frisch was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1904, the son of Justinian Frisch, a painter, and Auguste Meitner Frisch, a concert pianist. He himself was talented at both but also shared his aunt Lise Meitner's love of physics and commenced a period of study at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1926 with some work on the effect of the newly discovered electron on salts. After some years working in relatively obscure laboratories in Germany, Frisch obtained a position in Hamburg under the Nobel Prize-winning sc Otto Robert Frisch FRS (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrian-British physicist. With his German-British collaborator Rudolf Peierls he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940.

Frisch was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1904, the son of Justinian Frisch, a painter, and Auguste Meitner Frisch, a concert pianist. He himself was talented at both but also shared his aunt Lise Meitner's love of physics and commenced a period of study at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1926 with some work on the effect of the newly discovered electron on salts. After some years working in relatively obscure laboratories in Germany, Frisch obtained a position in Hamburg under the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Stern. Here he produced novel work on the diffraction of atoms (using crystal surfaces) and also proved that the magnetic moment of the proton was much larger than had been previously supposed.

The accession of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany in 1933 made Otto Robert Frisch make the decision to move to London, where he joined the staff at Birkbeck College and worked with the physicist Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett on cloud chamber technology and artificial radioactivity. He followed this with a five-year stint in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr where he increasingly specialised in nuclear physics, particularly in neutron physics.

During the Christmas holiday in 1938 he visited his aunt Lise Meitner in Kungälv. While there she received the news that Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin had discovered that the collision of a neutron with a uranium nucleus produced the element barium as one of its byproducts. Hahn, in a letter to Meitner, called this new reaction a "bursting" of the uranium nucleus. Frisch and Meitner hypothesized that the uranium nucleus had split in two, explained the process, estimated the energy released, and Frisch coined the term fission to describe it. Political restraints of the Nazi era forced the team of Hahn and that of Frisch and Meitner (both of whom were Jewish) to publish separately. Hahn's paper described the experiment and the finding of the barium byproduct. Meitner's and Frisch's paper explained the physics behind the phenomenon. Frisch went back to Copenhagen, where he was quickly able to isolate the fragments produced by fission reactions. As Frisch himself later recalls, a fundamental idea of the direct experimental proof of the nuclear fission was suggested to him by George Placzek.

In the Summer of 1939 Frisch left Denmark for what he anticipated would be a short trip to Birmingham, but the outbreak of World War II precluded his return. With war on his mind, he and the physicist Rudolf Peierls produced the Frisch–Peierls memorandum, which was the first document to set out a process by which an atomic explosion could be generated. Their process would use separated Uranium-235, which would require a fairly small critical mass and could be made to achieve criticality using conventional explosives to create an immensely powerful detonation. The memorandum went on to predict the effects of such an explosion — from the initial blast to the resulting fallout. This memorandum was the basis of British work on building an atomic device (the Tube Alloys project) and also that of the Manhattan Project on which Frisch worked as part of the British delegation. He went to America in 1943 having been hurriedly made a British citizen. ...more

Combine Editions
Otto Robert Frisch’s books

Average rating: 3.84 · 88 ratings · 8 reviews · 13 distinct works • Similar authors

	What Little I Remember (Canto original series) 4.23 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1979 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The nature of matter 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Atomic Physics Today it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1961 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Working with Atoms 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1965	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Meet The Atoms - A Popular Guide To Modern Physics 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2007 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Die Elementarteilchen der Physik / Mathematische Analyse von Formalstrukturen von Werken der Musik (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 124) (German Edition) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1963	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Nouvelle physique 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	何と少ししか覚えていないことだろう―原子と戦争の時代を生きて 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Meet the atoms,: A popular guide to modern physics, 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Atomic physics today (A Fawcett premier book) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Otto Robert Frisch…

Quotes by Otto Robert Frisch (?)

“We walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot (she said and proved that she could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by Bohr's idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop; such a drop might elongate and divide itself.

{On his aunt and fellow science Lise Meitner}”
― Otto Robert Frisch

tags: atomic-physics, bohr, idea, lise-meitner, meitner, niels-bohr, physics, science

2 likes

“I don’t have the total recall that makes the ideal autobiographer, nor have I kept diaries. I have always lived very much in the present, remembering only what seemed to be worth retelling. Even that ability is now partly gone; when I try to recall more recent memories they are fewer and less clear than those of my early days.”
― Otto Robert Frisch, What Little I Remember

0 likes