Lise Meitner 1938
The Material Disrupters 4
The knowledge that atoms can be transformed by irradiation into different atoms brought nuclear research almost back to the territory of alchemy, dreaming of creating gold of lesser valuable elements. The discovery that an atom is divisible made Einstein's equation E = mc2 a frightening reality. With the atomic fission an enormous amount of energy could be set free. Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn experimented in the thirties of the 20th century like many of their colleagues looking for heavy transuranic elements (ordninal number > 92). Lise Meitner, a refugee from Nazi Germany explained in her Swedish exile the result of an experiment which Hahn could not interpret and proved that an atomic fission had occured. Enrico Fermi thereupon built the first nuclear reactor and only 6,5 years later the first nuclear bomb was detonated.