What Really Happened the First Time We Split a Heavy Atom in Half

[@SciShow]

Thanks for pointing out that the original title for this episode could also apply to Rutherford! We've updated it to be more specific about the type of atom-splitting that led to Meitner's discovery of nuclear fission.

[@VioletDeathRei]

Appreciate the extra effort for better clarity and accuracy.

[@karthikeyanswaminathan2380]

Great video, can your next video be about biases? you have already briefly explained in an another video, but it would be great if you can explain in detail.

[@richardlinter4111]

Dear SciShow: Thanks. You could reasonably have justified your original title by pointing to Meitner & Frisch's 1938 paper coining the term "fission" for the process they observed. But that is now extended to include all nuclear "disintegration", the earlier term. The revised title is less problematic.

[@Mondos2001]

SciShow cewl

[@pauljackson2409]

Nice to see that you are responsive to comments by your viewers. Meitner was clearly a brilliant physicist but it's also clear that she received a great deal of recognition from the scientific community, both during her life-time and posthumously. Let's leave gender politics out of it. I'm sure that there were many male scientists and researchers over the years, who didn't get the recognition they deserved. Ignaz Semmelweis is a case in point.

[@Solublemoth]

I gotta say, having an element named after you is cooler than a nobel

[@Keyboardje]

The Nobel prize winner is (mostly) alive when receiving it, so (mostly) HE knows and has the advantage of it during his life time. Having an element named after you after your death... That's a bit useless, as the person itself never even gets to know about it. Not "cool" at all...

[@jomertomale]

Legacy is more than just the name, the glory, the fame, the money. Legacy is what the future have received from you and your fruit.

[@kellyshea92]

@@Keyboardje not being forgotten sounds cool

[@Keyboardje]

@@kellyshea92 Maybe not so much if you yourself would never know about it.

[@ghostnoodle9721]

@@Keyboardje I think theres something inherent to human psychology that makes us want to be thought of (perhaps the narcissist in all of us) and remembered. Im glad we do this so everyone (including narcissists) can give it their biggest try, furthering humanity's discoveries greatly

[@Master_Therion]

Both Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn split uranium by shooting it with neutrons, but... Hahn shot first!

[@Master_Therion]

5:00 Meitner should have also won the Nobel Prize, but it was awarded to Hahn, solo.

[@lloydgush]

My god, the puns, they don't stop!

[@ANDELE3025]

But Frisch shot second.

[@jackiels]

Master Therion I need this on a shirt 😂

[@Kludgzenjammer]

No words...

[@veeri92]

Yes, finally, a video about Lise Meitner! Not enough people know about her, which is too bad, because she has this /awesome/ life story and is seriously badass.

[@akshtaarora9843]

veeri92 IKR! I'm so glad. This was beautiful.

[@mikekuppen6256]

+1

[@jwoodside68]

I'll remember her now. It's always sad to hear things like this.

[@everydaytomorrow]

I genuinely hope shes suffering in hell ✌

[@baruchben-david4196]

@@everydaytomorrow WTF? That's seriously warped.

[@TheEgg185]

Meitner: Careful guys. This stuff could be used create a bomb. U.S.: We can make a bomb with it? Cool.

[@rb11158]

When will you guys hire a dude called Bob, so we can call him SciShow Bob?

[@Ethorbit]

And another dude named Vegana so we can say SciShow Bob and Vegana!

[@allanrichardson1468]

Does Kelsey Grammer even want the role of SciShow Bob? (Kelsey voices Krusty’s nemesis on “The Simpson’s.”)

Look man I dont mind but I'm not sitting back pretending that women are equal

[@HelloHello-ki7pq]

Bob Marley ?

[@troyna77]

They did but it kind of fell through because it was his uncle.

[@sarahp6512]

I did a project on Meitner in high school physics. She's just really cool, and you guys did a great job giving her the recognition she deserves.

[@jimjimsauce]

Honestly so stoked to learn about another female scientist that has made such huge breakthroughs!! Hats off to Lisa, I can only imagine the excitement she felt when figuring out what was really going on =)

[@richardlinter4111]

"After the war... Nobel prize in Chemistry for discovering Nuclear Fission to Otto Hahn..." (5:02) No no no! Read the Nobel citation: "for his discovery of the fission of HEAVY nuclei" (my emphasis). Light nuclei had already been split. What was new, and terrifying, was the chain reaction - only possible with heavy nuclei (or lithium, but that's a different process). Meitner deserves credit there. Also it wasn't "after" the war: this was the 1944 award, held over till 1945 but still.

[@sudarshanlahoti3856]

I had a question, "If I injure my birthmark will it grow back into normal skin or a birthmark again?"

[@LordZevv]

Sudarshan Lahoti actually a good question

[@geefreck]

If you injure it a lot, eventually it will become a highly detailed tattoo of Kevin Bacon's face.

[@matthewmcewen9274]

Depends on the damage you do to it. I'd assume if you were to cut off a birthmark it would be replaced by scar tissue.

[@baruchben-david4196]

Yes.

[@farhan6057]

It’ll grow back into a normal skin

[@kalenkerby7445]

Hey Sci Show. How do Different animals create Venom. Like snakes and jellyfish. How is it actually created and why the effects are what they are, but why anti venom lessens the effects. Great video btw

[@kalenkerby7445]

Kevin Richey you do realize that that's why they do these videos, Correct? Or do you just enjoy being a troll?

[@sirsanti8408]

Kevin Richey you could use Google on litterally everything they talk about

[@loismcdonald2400]

Kalen Kerby

[@loismcdonald2400]

Kalen Kerby and me

[@vincentshi4037]

Anti venom is created by injecting venom into a animal and extracting it's antibodies. The antibodies fight the venom

[@allanrichardson1468]

Not Dr. Meitner’s intention, but her discovery did make some craters on Earth, so naming craters on Luna and Venus in her honor is certainly appropriate.

[@swunt10]

no her discovery. she was only one person of a group.

[@chaotixthefox]

Mar She did figure out the mechsnism thouvh

[@TheJayman213]

oh Snap!

[@sleepyearth]

Well she and her nephew did the calculation out.... Hahn didn't bother to do so.

[@lichking3711]

a lot of craters, actually

[@michaeljohn8905]

What an amazing human being. The definition of civilian. I wish there where more people today that viewed life as this amazing woman and human being. Salute to you Dr Meitner. You will forever be remembered.

[@jonathanX01]

History and science, both my favorite subjects.

[@talideon]

It's one thing for Hahn to have got the award, but kind of of shitty that Hahn didn't acknowledge her as deserving in sharing in the award. ☹️

[@LOLchestra]

The emoji you used at the end of your comment looks exactly like your profile picture

[@Soldierboy54b]

+Keith Gaughan....Look on the bright side: In older age, Hahn took a lightsabre to the gut.

[@moviemaker1986]

Yeah, though it's some kind of posthumous justice that in 1997, element 105, Hahnium, was officially renamed Dubnium after its the Russian city it was discovered in. Speaking of, if you haven't read "E=mc^2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation," I highly recommend it. It's a good read that delves much deeper into the history of the splitting of the atom. And since the book treats the equation as a metaphorical person, it focuses on the human aspects, not just science.

[@FerretLance]

Keith Gaughan Meinternium is named after her and she was awarded by other organizations. But yeah, it was common for women not to be acknowledged.

[@talideon]

Ferret Lance, yes, I know, and all that was mentioned in the video. However, I was _specifically_ talking about Hahn's behaviour, which was particularly objectionable because he knew her and worked with her all that time.

[@richardlinter4111]

Thoroughly enjoyed the Meitner saga, but the title violates truth in advertising: no way was this the first time scientists split the atom. That happened quarter of a century earlier with helium/nitrogen collisions fracturing nuclei. There had already been a separate Chemistry Nobel, awarded in 1908 to Rutherford: "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances" - and a decade later the man smashed nuclei together, transmuting elements on the way (helium to hydrogen, and nitrogen to oxygen).

[@DRMadeIt]

Episodes like this are my favorite. Thanks for the knowledge

[@jMcWill781]

0:02 I was very confused because I go to Emerson college which is NOT at all a STEM school

[@crust1na602]

Gauge Wiley u live in boston

[@jMcWill781]

ANDELE3025 But.. But it's not. Did you not read my comment? Really stretching pretty far to argue about anything, aren't you?

[@williamnash4799]

Emerson Electric is a manufacturing company that Hank has done promotional material for in the past.

[@allanrichardson1468]

William Nash Emerson used to be a well known maker of consumer electronics, which was mostly radios, TV sets, and stereo systems.

[@culwin]

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a nuclear scientist who drew the comic strip "Garfield".

[@whippetgood1806]

A woman I have never heard of that I am so happy to have learned about! Thank you for sharing another amazing scientist with us.

[@ammarmoussa4267]

Lise Meitner has always been one of my all time favourite scientists, alongside James Maxwell

[@zarkoroncevic9033]

What do nuclear scientists eat? Fission chips.

[@sirkowski]

*clap*

[@Deadbond1]

Zarko Roncevic hahahha

[@ObjectsInMotion]

Take that scientins!

[@adrastos9464]

What did the male stamen say to the female pistol?

[@Chemeleon15]

Zarko Roncevic British Physicists*

[@icanzing]

Thank you for this. I watched this 2 hours ago and between now and then I have written a whole paper on her, what an inspiring woman, thank you for making this video!! Also, thanks for including sources in the bio Scishow: saving students lifes since 2012

[@puncheex2]

Basically, Hahn was a chemist, and so barium showing up, uninvited as it were, in the middle of his uranium preparation was a complete mystery. Meitner was a nuclear physicist, and for her it was more a question of fitting the pieces together. SciShow should have emphasized that she not only recognized that the barium indicated fission, but also determined that krypton was the other part (a noble gas, it would have been very difficult to find the way the barium was), and further determined the loss of weight in the nuclei from the original U-235 nucleus, and found that it accounted, through Einstein's formula, for the huge amount of kinetic energy released. All done in her head, while on a skiing vacation over the Christmas holiday with her nephew when Hahn's communique arrived. Also, she communicated the discovery to Nils Bohr who went to the US in early January to attend a physics conference, in which he passed the news on to all the physicists, native and alien, in America. That including Ernest O. Lawrence, who carried it back to his lab in Berkeley, CA and reproduced the results there. In this way the news spread much faster than the journals would have been able to do it. Finally, Enrico Fermi witnessed the same results 6 months before in his lab in Rome, but he mis-guessed about the what was happening. After describing his results incorrectly at a conference, he moved his family to America, and was present there to hear Bohr's news. He could have been the discoverer of fission.

[@jjc5475]

emmerson is the smartest sponsor i've ever seen on YT. had people advertise tunnelbear and audible. but since emmerson doesn't tell me what they do i have to google them.. and their add doesn't ruin the YT video by being way too long.

[@christosvoskresye]

The moral of the story really is that awards like Nobel prizes (or Oscars, or Heismans, etc.) tend to be overrated.

[@scooprussell930]

I'm not a physicist but I love this history and science. Fascinating stuff.

[@ZombieInTheSun]

There are also at least three Lise Meitner Streets in Germany, often near universities' physics departments.

[@luckyboylb]

Thank you SciShow. The way you make your videos about the life events of the researchers is really great. Keep going :)

[@aNytmare]

So this episode is basically: "Great Minds in Physics: Lise Meitner" without saying her name in the title?

[@SaltpeterTaffy]

I was thinking the exact same thing. I was expecting something a bit less focused on a specific individual.

[@Kaihlik]

I was equally confused by that. Kept waiting for it to pivot to talking back to the topic more generally. It was a good video, just think they should have named her in the video title.

[@kairos-049]

Nyt Mare Yeah, keeping up with the precedent.

[@pedror598]

Actually this is a video about the first time we split an atom.

[@alainischileno]

they omitted her name to avoid her hair catching fire and burning the title

[@virgilmanson214]

Woooah. How trippy. I just read a book on the history of Plutonium, and learned all this. Good read, highly recommend

[@omegahaxors9-11]

Good god watching this series has taught me that most major scientists get stiffed out of credit.

[@patheddles4004]

"What did Crick and Watson discover?" "Rosalind Franklin's notes."

[@RandomPlayIist]

A lot of women and and those with a less prestigious background have gotten shafted.

[@theanyktos]

There's also a Liese Meitner auditorium at the physic's institute at the university of vienna, I had some lectures there. (I'm a chemistry student, but we're right next door and we do have to take physics classes)

[@MT-ur5dp]

Also the Lise Meinter Haus (Institute for physics) in Berlin. There is also the non-profit organization, called the Lise Meitner Society, "committed to work towards equal opportunities in the natural sciences and mathematics inside and outside of academia".

[@TheCzarcastic]

Fission was an idea with a ton of potential *ayy* i see what you did there

[@boggless2771]

Czar Ec - More like a Kiloton of potential. Buh dum Chhh

[@wademeitner6605]

Thanks for your video. Thanks again from Panama city beach FL

[@PopeLando]

One thing I realised when it turned out Lise Meitner was nearly 90 when she died (rare achievement for an early nuclear physicist!) was that therefore she was nearly 60 when she made her discovery! Go us oldies!

[@Brieperalta]

Thus is one of my favorite episodes!

[@hotbam37]

Hey I recognize this guy. He's the reason I passed biology lol

[@stacystanton7993]

Giving scishow a thumbs up for listening to viewers and updating the title.

[@Skeazix]

Thanks Hank. This was a particularly good video.

[@mylesbishop1240]

Skeazix where duh homie Muscle Hank @ doe

[@maverickdisco4036]

She is buried in Bramley a small village in Hampshire UK. I heard that she was buried there recently and went to look for the grave. The grave is very understated, a real shame. The setting is very peaceful though.

[@microbuilder]

"Relative is space and time and ours is infinitesimal, we're just at the 3 in the string of Pi, not even at the decimal."

[@neutralnarwhal8184]

Is this from anything?

[@microbuilder]

Its a line from a nerdy song I wrote years ago lol

[@med8615]

I like it. Share the whole song please.

[@akshtaarora9843]

microbuilder Yes Please, share it! We'd love to hear it. That's a beautiful line.

[@kavishshah5233]

SHARE IT!

[@iFrostNight]

... what a hero. I cant believe I havent heard of her before. Shes amazing.

[@jacintahopkins5318]

This might be a dumb comment but I thought Ernest Rutherford was the first to split the atom in 1917?

[@Antiganos]

Jacinta Hopkins There's a grey area around it, they didn't split the nucleus* in 1917, although it was the first time they intentionally broke an atom, but it's really like cutting an apple in half vs cutting a slice of it. Which counts as splitting the apple? I don't know, and neither do most people.

[@richardlinter4111]

Dear Ms Hopkins: Yes, you are correct. Mr Orr: there is no grey area. 1917 marks the first deliberate breaking of an atom. Rutherford began splitting light elements from 1917 onwards, and that means he did split their nuclei.

[@Druicidal]

Richard that was transmutation, arguably not as important as fission.

[@richardlinter4111]

Andrew: transmutation is changing the atomic mass, and usually atomic number, of an atom in either direction, whether up (fusion) or down (fission), and fission is thus a subset of transmutation, which is therefore more important than fission. Rutherford in fact achieved both, and before anyone else.

[@Druicidal]

Richard Linter plenty of people performed experiments where fission occurred before it was correctly identified, by Mietner. Rutherford identified the neutron, transmutation, as well as the correct cross section of the atom.

[@iisnothere]

I got an idea for Great Minds: Temple Grandin and her work on animal husbandry and animal psychology. Personal favorite of mine.

[@b.lonewolf417]

YES!!!

[@lloydgush]

How many of those who worked with nuclear physics at the beginning wished they knew to wear hairnets and lead vests?

[@melissabautz2346]

I know I did! No, really. Call 911. My phone is in the car, I'm the last person in the lab, and my hair is OMIGOSH MY HEADISBURNING

[@sarahp6512]

I love Lise Meitner! I did a school project about her. Her life was so interesting.

[@shauntempleton5988]

Wasn't Ernest Rutherford the first to split the atom?

[@richardlinter4111]

Yes. He was. And yes, that is nuclear fission. He did it with helium into hydrogen, then (much later) beryllium into alphas. But those are light metals. What was new was the fission of heavy elements. This was important because of the mechanism - chain reaction.

[@swunt10]

no he didn't. the atoms split by themselves because of radioactive decay just like in nature. the discovery is in doing it on purpose and being able to explain it. if you put a chunk of uranium on you table you wouldn't say you discovered fission would you?

[@richardlinter4111]

Mar: Rutherford most certainly did split the atom first 'on purpose'. Helium does not naturally decay into hydrogen. It required collision with a heavier nucleus (nitrogen) to break up the helium nucleus, and it was Rutherford who arranged for that.

[@Unethical.FandubsGames]

I thought Helium was some massively unstable radioactive element that splits into hydrogen all the time... Oh wait, no I didn't. Apparently some people do.

[@Druicidal]

Cao Cao helium IS alpha radiation. Rutherford discovered transmutation, not fission.

[@MA-fb1pc]

Thanks for English transcript.

[@phantasm1234]

Hello, SciShow! Do you think you could make a video explaining the current knowledge of cerebral aneurysms? I had one rupture at 19 and after learning so much about them, I would love for a bigger audience to learn of them!

[@wickersticks]

I would also like to know this

[@caroljomartin3051]

phantasm1234 Good suggestion. That's how my sister-in-law died.

[@Oi-cm6sw]

Too bad they won't do thisn

[@krashd]

I don't think there's enough content for a video. I mean blood vessel weakens and a bubble develops, the end. Unless it bursts and tries to kill you. My dad died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

[@fredsanford3958]

I'm glad someone finally gave Lise some credit

[@mrdanwallis]

Why was there no mention of Ernest Rutherford in this video? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford

[@Terry2020]

Lise is a great scientist, what she did touched me.

[@ahmedabdellatif98]

What about Rutherford though

[@richardlinter4111]

Rutherford did split the atom very early on. That is, he is credited with discovery of fission. The Nobel prize awarded to Hahn was for a subset - heavy elements.

[@tor3203]

Someone should make a movie about this!!!

[@matthewboswell2494]

Actually the manhattan project started when the austrian physicist Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls calculated that an airbourne atomic bomb was plausible. they sent a memo as such to Winston Churchill which essentially started the british version before the americans commandeered the project.

[@richardlinter4111]

Mr Boswell: To be exact, the MAUD committee and the Tube Alloys project. The empire personnel went to the Manhattan Project eventually, but Tube Alloys was part of the much larger DSIR and the British resurrected it under a different name when the USA, in a dramatically pointless exercise, cut them out after the war ended.

[@goteverlastinglife]

Great post! Thanks.

[@craigbrian]

What do you do with a dead chemist? Barium

[@WooMaster777]

God bless the women of science and thank you SciShow for schooling us on their contributions! ❤☺

[@Emma-ri9xl]

I really wish this came out a week ago when I had to write an essay 😢😢

[@ArtistryBranson]

Fantastic episode!

[@ofs5554]

That shirt makes your neck look long

[@3StripesVon]

I’m dead

[@avadae9126]

I'm alive

[@gastonjaillet9512]

So what ?

[@mrxanthios7045]

I am a quantum being and I am both alive and dead

[@blurob1326]

That was a great 2 yr discussion.

[@nicholasparliament7197]

Such a fantastic history. Connecting science and history, it's great!

[@impalabeeper]

Lol, a woman in my pharma class has her hair got caught on fire!

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

impalabeeper oh the irony

[@TheEgg185]

impalabeeper. See? The men back then were right! They were only looking out for her safety!

[@MrFro89]

Chemistry labs tend to have open fires in more than one place... I'm not surprised.

[@Vysair]

MrFro89 Yeah but when a woman's hair got caught on fire, they will running wild on instinct and that will spread the fire even further and it could possibly spread to hear head in a second.

[@twilight3272]

Seen a girl do it over a cooking fire and not even realize it lol

[@obsidian9998]

Maybe a video on nuclear power in civilian use to space travel what ended such progression. Video's awesome.

[@markholm7050]

You are shortchanging Hahn. He got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, because the discovery of uranium fission depended on very difficult and precise chemistry, chemistry that Hahn pioneered. If Hahn had not been an outstanding, pioneering chemist, the discovery would not have happened, well not then and not by them. In hindsight, we strongly tend to think of everything having to do with nuclear fission, and nuclear reactions in general, as the realm of physics, but that is both bad history and a bad description of the current state of nuclear technology. Chemists and chemical engineers have always played central roles. The current prejudice against Hahn is also due to another relatively recent prejudice in favor of theoretical over experimental science. This is particularly true of theoretical physics. It goes back to Einstein's celebrity. These days, most any journeyman theoretical physicist can get him or herself on TV or KZbin or write popular books, but experimentalists, whether physicist, chemist, biologist or whatever, rarely get any popular attention at all. That seems to go back to Einstein. Before Albert, the most popularly famous scientist was probably Marie Curie, not only a woman, but also a chemist and also an experimentalist, that is a laboratory chemist, not a theoretician. And, M. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobels and still the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two different science categories. A third prejudice involves the modern tendency to look for women in science whose work has not received the credit they deserve. There are some quite obvious examples. Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin deserves (and today usually gets) credit for determining the correct, hydrogen - helium dominated composition of stars, a discovery for which Henry Norris Russell used to get more credit than he deserved. Rosalind Franklin had the bad fortune to die before her work could be acknowledged with a Nobel. Jocelyn Bell-Burnell really did discover the first pulsar signal. Part of the problem has been the peculiar rules of the Nobel prizes: no more than three persons per category per year, no dead people. Saying that someone did not receive due credit just because they did not receive a Nobel citation is a bit narrow minded. As you point out, Meitner has an element named after her, a signal honor, and her contribution certainly is not forgotten or minimized.

[@richardlinter4111]

Mr Holm: Your potted histories are more fact-based than most but still somewhat wanting. Most tellingly, Rosalind (not Roselyn) Franklin's lack of credit for the double-helix arose from what amounted to scientific theft by Wilkins, as has subsequently been made clear by many sources. Cecilia (not Cecelia) Payne received a Harvard chair and was eventually, ironically, awarded the Henry Norris Russell lectureship - worth a little money, and a lot of prestige. Ms Bell is on record as saying that in her view the lack of credit was entirely to be expected as a normal consequence of being just a student, and the supervisor should get the credit. To your list of the Nobel restrictions I would add one more: the discovery must further the cause of peace. Meitner's chain reaction contributions did not obviously do that.

[@markholm7050]

In the Hahn - Meitner Nobel Prize controversy, there is another, very significant, factor that is omitted from current, popular discussions, including this video. The Chemistry prize to Hahn was awarded in 1944, during the height of World War Two. The Swedish Academy members were rather isolated and communications of all sorts were very severely disrupted. One can understand that the Academy did not wish to suspend awarding prizes altogether, but, when putting their work in historical perspective, we really should acknowledge that this was a very difficult time.

[@markholm7050]

Richard Linter Thank you for correcting my misspellings. I have edited my post to correct them.

[@T-Radi]

Awesome video! Just awesome! Love it!! Many things up!

[@dejosss]

What really happened was that they got two halves of an atom

[@DragAmiot]

I'm glad she will not be forgotten.

[@FlyKiwi]

I was all excited to hear a story about New Zealanders being awesome at science. But a story about women being awesome at science is also good.

[@kaiser741]

Huge respect to this woman!

[@rubbers3]

The title is misleading. It's more of a story about Meitner, and not just about the discovery. And honestly - I don't like the tone of the video that suggest that it was all her, and her coworkers had nothing to do with it but got all the glory...

[@puncheex2]

From wikipedia (and if you have a better source, please submit): "The many honors that Meitner received in her lifetime have long been overshadowed by the fact that she did not share the Nobel Prize for nuclear fission awarded to Otto Hahn. On 15 November 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei."[38] At the time Meitner herself wrote in a letter, "Surely Hahn fully deserved the Nobel Prize for chemistry. There is really no doubt about it. But I believe that Otto Robert Frisch and I contributed something not insignificant to the clarification of the process of uranium fission-how it originates and that it produces so much energy and that was something very remote to Hahn."[39] In a similar vein, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Lise Meitner's former assistant, later added that Hahn "certainly did deserve this Nobel Prize. He would have deserved it even if he had not made this discovery. But everyone recognized that the splitting of the atomic nucleus merited a Nobel Prize."[40] Frisch wrote similarly in a 1955 letter.[41] Hahn's receipt of a Nobel Prize was long expected. Both he and Meitner had been nominated for both the chemistry and the physics prizes several times even before the discovery of nuclear fission.[42][43] In 1945 the Committee in Sweden that selected the Nobel Prize in Chemistry decided to award that prize solely to Hahn. In the 1990s, the long-sealed records of the Nobel Committee's proceedings became public, and the comprehensive biography of Meitner published in 1996 by Ruth Lewin Sime took advantage of this unsealing to reconsider Meitner's exclusion.[44] In a 1997 article in the American Physical Society journal Physics Today, Sime and her colleagues Elisabeth Crawford and Mark Walker wrote: "It appears that Lise Meitner did not share the 1944 prize because the structure of the Nobel committees was ill-suited to assess interdisciplinary work [i.e., physics AND chemistry]; because the members of the chemistry committee were unable or unwilling to judge her contribution fairly; and because during the war the Swedish scientists relied on their own limited expertise. Meitner's exclusion from the chemistry award may well be summarized as a mixture of disciplinary bias, political obtuseness, ignorance, and haste."[7]

[@rubbers3]

So it had nothing to do with her being a woman. And she, Hahn and Frisch were just parts of the same puzzle. Still - the video focuses mainly on her, and how bad the world is, how sexist that she did not get the Nobel prize.

[@richardlinter4111]

Hahn deserved the Nobel for Chemistry not for splitting the atom - that had already been done - but for isolation of the reaction products (Kr & Ba), a chemical tour de force. Meitner's contribution, besides the very word 'fission', was even greater, from a scientific point of view: it set those results in a theoretical framework. But neither the coining of "fission" to replace the earlier "disintegration", nor her liquid-drop surface tension mechanism for fission, nor her demonstration that of neutron multiplication, was chemistry. It was Physics.

[@newtonjohn851]

Love this channel

[@salinox2086]

I f****** love science

[@basseldahdouh8736]

Is math related to science ?

[@placido593]

Math is science

[@jonathanowo7584]

There is a song hank made with that exact title

[@benschofield1361]

TheBlockyBird other way around

[@cheaterman49]

HFS :-)

[@MissBunny850]

emerson please someone teach me why ads are good for creators even when they are being manipulated for money not the benefit

[@plcflame]

"Hey, I was pressing some buttons and stuff, and now we have nuclear weapons. Ooops."

[@catman8965]

Thanks for giving credit to Meitner. Even today some people still give full credit to Hahn!

[@philidor9657]

Meitner: Ok Roosevelt, we found a thing that can be used to make really dangerous bombs, so don't do it because it's too dangerous Roosevelt: *creates an atomic bomb*

[@buckhorncortez]

No. The scientists took the bomb to the government, not the other way around. In fact, the original Uranium Committee formed by Roosevelt to look into the "uranium problem" dedicated a whopping $6,000 the first year for research.

[@ddmagee57]

Hank Green is a miracle worker. I despise people who talk fast, but with Hank it's OK.

[@marksusskind1260]

#GoneFission🎣

[@melissabautz2346]

#HairCaughtOnFireWhileFission #Whoops #Call991LOL

[@chocolateextravaganza1907]

Mark Susskind haha yes

[@richardlinter4111]

Hm. Susskind. Any relation? #TrulyGoneFishing #StringsAttached

[@Hopeless_and_Forlorn]

In "Radioactive Transformations," a1905 book based upon a lecture he delivered as part of the Silliman lecture series, Ernest Rutherford speculated upon possible future discoveries to be made about changes in atoms caused by radioactive decay. At the time, Rutherford's research was at the leading edge of atomic physics. In the book, he clearly forecasts the possibility of what Meitner was to name nuclear fission, even though his lecture and book were delivered several years before he discovered the atomic nucleus. He speculated upon the possibility of the atom breaking into two parts of roughly equal size, and specifically stated that the breakup of a heavy atom would be evidenced by the presence of two elements, each of roughly half the atomic weight of the progenitor atom. This is exactly what Hahn and Strassmann found in 1938. Considering this, I wonder why the scientific world was so surprised--I would say thunderstruck, according to many contemporary accounts--at the discovery of atomic fission. It is not as if Rutherford had never told them to look for it, and even how to recognize it. Not to take anything away from Meitner. And for all the misogynists bitching in the comments about a mere woman being recognized (belatedly, of course) as a great scientist, remember this--the only human to ever receive Noble Prizes in two different disciplines of science is, and remains...Marie Curie. Eat your hearts out.

[@Infernovogel]

I am austrian. I am really proud to share a nationality with Lise Meitner, even though there is no reason for it, because I have done nothing to share in her accomplishments. BUT we did have a Star Trek pen&paper role playing adventure that took place on a ship called the 'Lise Meitner' once ^^

[@358itachi]

@SciShow Isn't it Enrico Fermi, who was the first to carry out nuclear fission and get a Nobel Prize also for his discovery. Although he concluded the products to be new elements rather than Kr and Ba.

[@richardlinter4111]

Dear Mr Acharya: No, but Fermi was the senior scientist in charge when the first atomic pile went critical in 1942 at Stagg field courts, on the Chicago campus.

[@puncheex2]

Fermi did the experiment 6 moths before Hahn and split the atom, but he didn't recognize the result as fission of uranium. He thought the barium (or rather, its radioactive signature) was something else, as you say. It was chemists, like Hahn, who found out that the residue was chemically identical to barium, but was also radioactive. Fermi got his Nobel prize for the explanation of how a new force, called the weak force, was implicated in beta decay of many isotopes.

[@richardlinter4111]

Dear Puncheex2: No. His Nobel was at least initially a mistake. Fermi's Nobel citation reads as follows: ""for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". Beta decay (which happens to neutrons, and yields eg. neutrinos) is nowhere mentioned. The "new radioactive elements" did not exist, so the award of the Nobel was a mistake; but by the time this was clear, Fermi had amply justified a laureate, so no-one cared.

[@358itachi]

I read Fermi concluded that the one of the products is Radium (as the products were radioactive) and tried to separate it using Barium (same periodic group) salts but could not do it. But unlike a physicist (Fermi), chemists like Hahn could deduce it was indeed Barium not Radium when they repeated his experiments.

[@puncheex2]

That is correct. No one could weigh the radioactive residue, so it looked like radium, and that was in line with earlier experiments in which small pieces (alpha particles) were knocked off of nuclei, resulting in a small decline in the atomic number. Hahn as a chemist tried by various chemical means to separate the residue out, but found that it reacted exactly as barium did, leading him to the conclusion it must be barium, but of a radioactive variety. It was a classic situation encountered while experimenting in the bleeding edge of knowledge.

[@jeremycastro5401]

So they split Uranium...not an atom...the word _atom_ means "uncuttable" therefore you cannot cut or split that which cannot be cut or split.

[@klepto7207]

A uranium atom not just uranium

[@jeremycastro5401]

@@klepto7207 You do understand what this means don't you? It means that our traditional "atom" was never the true atom to begin with. For according to the philosophy of Democritus you will get to a point where you can no longer cut the _atomos_ in half.

[@melodyqueen6432]

Lisa Meitner - The ultimate Doctor Who guest. Curious, determined, brilliant, clever, and did amazing things for humanity. Continued her research and contributions even after it had been bastardized as a war machine - without hope, without witness, without reward. Perhaps the Doctor could show her a bit of her future impact on humanity like he did for Van Gogh??

[@melissabautz2346]

What do Nuclear Physicists do when they need more money? They go to a bank, and preform a radon it.

[@cloroxbleach2079]

Get out😑👉

[@lightyagami2978]

Lise's life would be a great anime!

[@Paul-D-Hoff]

Hair catching fire was a BS reason.

[@erikawanner7355]

Yep. But at least they EVENTUALLY let her participate

[@NyanCatHerder]

Pretty much. The video kind of calls this out by pointing out that a secondary entrance somehow solved the problem. "Unrelated" reasons given for excluding minorities or marginalized groups are usually very obvious as smoke screens.

[@erikawanner7355]

C.S. B. Of course it doesn’t completely “solve” the problem but back then women weren’t allowed to do ANYTHING science/math related. I’d say by them eventually letting her was at some progress...

[@melissabautz2346]

It's a problem in the lab. I know it was a BS reason, but my hair has caught on fire 60 times today. Then again, I do work at a gasoline, maych, and oven shop.

[@erikawanner7355]

Melissa Bautz: hehe. In all seriousness, be careful

[@rick91443]

Thanks. Always enjoy your videos...rr

[@starblomma]

Can you make a video about Mileva Maric Einstein and explain why probably a lot of Albert Einstein's work was partially from her? It would be awesome to shed light on some of the brilliant women the world doesn't know about just because they were born at a time where women weren't respected in science :)

[@richardlinter4111]

While I would tend to agree that Ms Marič certainly was a gifted mathematician, thoroughly up to date with mathematical physics of the day, she was out of his life by the time General Relativity became a thing and the attempts to prove otherwise by feminists with an agenda have been shown up as mendacious, misleading, and self-serving. That said, Marič was beyond doubt Einstein's sounding board contributing much - perhaps decisively - to special relativity; Einstein himself said so, and wrote it down in surviving letters. I'm quite prepared to believe that credit for this has unreasonably been denied, but the necessary disinterested investigation has yet to happen.

[@starblomma]

Where did I refer to General Relativity? I just spoke about his work in general and there is certainly evidence that she had an impact on this. But it's interesting to see that simply mentioning her involvement seems to threaten you slightly. Why else would you bring up "feminists with an agenda" instead of just acknowledging that there might be contributions from her the world doesn't know a lot about?! It is true that for a very long time there hasn't been much of an investigation, simply because there wasn't a lot of material. Although I think that for example the fact that he gave her the money from his nobel price kind of speaks for itself. I don't want to downplay Albert Einstein's achievements, I'm just saying it would be nice to also shed some light on the second person that was heavily involved in it and is often forgotten. There are more than enough videos about Albert, what's so bad about asking for one about Mileva? ;-)

[@richardlinter4111]

Dear ParticleFairy: You referred to Einstein's General Relativity implicitly when you "spoke of his work in general". You will find my observation elsewhere on this thread to the effect that of 174 Chemistry laureates and 203 Physics laureates, only four and two respectively were women. I do not feel the slightest bit threatened by mentioning Einstein's wife's involvement and thought I had made clear that in my view her contribution to Special Relativity, at least, could not reasonably be impugned. I'm happy to stipulate that feminists have many good arguments to the effect that women are systematically under-represented in the sciences and fail to get credit for what they do achieve. That is not presently my concern, however. Marič's contribution to General Relativity is far more problematic than the early special case of un-accelerated reference frames because first, the sources are lacking, and second, there are those with a political agenda - including feminists, whether you like it or not - who muddy the waters in attempting to have their views accepted as gospel. I'm happy to agree however that even her work on special relativity is under-appreciated, and systematically by older men. I particularly blame Peierls for that state of affairs. Preconceptions of that magnitude, on either side of the question, should be anathema to science history, never mind science proper. Such prejudices are not research, still less science. It is not even reasonable discussion. It has in many respects been shown fraudulent. This makes establishing the truth next to impossible, for the foreseeable future.

[@ineinerbank]

I went to viennas lise meitner realgymnasium, a high school with a very strong focus on sciences.

[@terrillwilliams1515]

WE'RE ALL HERE FROM SPONGEBOB

[@0.-.0]

Thank you for this

[@AarontheGreatXCII-kn4gj]

*WHERE DID CONSCIOUSNESS COME INTO BEING FROM? I MEAN IN THE BEGINNING, HOW DID INANIMATE MATTER JUST BECOME CONSCIOUS?*

[@Ian-bf4yk]

Aaron Slifka existential crisis?

[@Duck-tm4bi]

Aaron Slifka Through forming a pattern of filtering and selfreflection that evolved during evolution i guess.

[@majorlanguid]

Pikachu Sparks, probably.

[@jipdevries1541]

Aaron Slifka electric signals.

[@acewarmonger6550]

Major Languid lol

[@allanrichardson1468]

An interesting bit of trivia about the letter from Einstein’s colleagues starting the Manhattan Project: after receiving the letter, FDR ordered the top military brass to write up the detailed orders for the project and return them for his signature so the work could begin. The orders came back on a Saturday, and FDR, who “never” worked on weekends, went into his office that Saturday (for some unknown reason) and signed the orders, then sent them back; normally he would have dealt with them on Monday. That Saturday was the 6th of December, 1941. Had he waited, it could have taken MONTHS to get to this “routine” paperwork.

[@SleepDeprived95]

Yaaasss more stories about women in STEM pls ❤️

[@654Crossman]

SleepDeprived95 so you obviously dont care about innovation and discovery if it isnt done with the help of a woman, right? I trust you will stop driving, using your phone, using computers, using paper, using toilets, and pretty much stop breathing, right? You feminists are all the same. I enjoy learning. Not virtue signaling...

[@youcrany]

Best episode of scishow of all time. Course of history would be infinitely different if this discovery didn’t happen.

[@parallel4]

Makes you wonder how many women in science we don't even know about due to them not be included in official documents or scientific papers.

[@jacobstar2631]

snowdudelester Well, if we know about her then obviously there was documentation about her contributions which means not many woman have been ostracized. Makes you also wonder in today’s day and age if we will just prop woman up just because they are woman and not because they actually did anything. Too much feminization can make me doubt certain stories. Just celebrate the person and not the gender otherwise question will always arise.

[@parallel4]

+Jacob Star In English, please? (And obviously if we know about her then it''s through documentation. But when they are documented, they're credited far less than men so it suggests that a lot of women wouldn't have been credited for their work most of the time. That's not the meaning of the word "feminisation". That refers to the act of making something more feminine... But anyway, what does that have to do with anything? Nobody congratulates a specific woman for just being a woman.)

[@Antiganos]

Jacob Star His point is that not many women were credited with stuff they did historically, and if they were working with a male, only one name made it into the history books. Obviously we know of the cases where somebody else deserves credit, but there's probably waaaaaay more that we do not know of.

[@swunt10]

not many since not many worked in science. besides the PC gestapo would have dragged every story out already. just look at this video. a man doing the experiment, a man doing the measurements, a man writing the paper and a man together with the only woman of the group doing the math. and look what this video is all about, who gets all the credit and gets mentioned more often then all the other people of the group together. that's what the PC do-gooders are all about. pure ideologists.

[@richardlinter4111]

The classic example in my opinion would not be Meitner but Rosalind Franklin.

[@dereklam1225]

3:46 By god is that droplet splitting in two satisfying

[@thompson12345]

Terrible title.. the first time we split the atom was actually 1917. The title should be something like: "How nuclear fission was discovered".

[@richardlinter4111]

Well no. Nuclear fission is splitting atoms, already. But yes, in 1917 Rutherford did split helium into hydrogen, even if the word "fission" wasn't used (he said "disintegration"). People will tell you that in 1932 he and his students split the atom artificially, using a particle accelerator, but that's not quite right. What Cockroft and Walton did, as reported by Rutherford, was fuse hydrogen nuclei (protons) on to lithium, to make beryllium which decays quite quickly into alphas (helium). That's not splitting, that's fusion followed by naturally occurring decay, but which happens so fast that it was thought unreasonable to nitpick about the intermediate step between hydrogen-lithium collision, and alphas resulting.

[@akshtaarora9843]

So I guess the thumbnail made more justice

[@richardlinter4111]

Yes, inasmuch as it shows a heavy nucleus splitting in two not so heavy parts.

[@NaneuxPeeBrane]

I wasnt aware of the 1917 date - i was gonna make a correction and say it was the 1920's - but are now corrected.

[@richardlinter4111]

There was a war going on. He wasn't free to report it till 1919, and didn't give a complete report till 1926.

[@EmeliaSings]

This was an awesome episode, thank you :')