PERSONALIA

NOBEL PRIZES

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1944 has been awarded to Otto Hahn for the chemical proof (made jointly with F. Strassmann) of the fission of uranium and thorium. O. Hahn is known for his outstanding work in the field of the chemistry of radioactive substances. He began his work under the direction of W. Ramsay in London, then for some time worked together with Rutherford, who at that time was a professor in Montreal, Canada. During this period he discovered radiothorium and radioactinium. Returning to Berlin, he isolated (in 1906) mesothorium 1 and mesothorium 2. He was one of the pioneers of the technique of radioactive indicators, which made it possible to study the properties of “weightless” quantities of substance. Together with Lise Meitner he discovered and isolated protactinium as a chemical element (in 1929 he reported that his laboratory had 15 mg of this substance in pure form). His thirty-year collaboration with Lise Meitner, interrupted by the latter’s forced emigration from Hitlerite Germany, is a remarkable example of fruitful collaboration between a chemist and a physicist investigating one and the same phenomenon from different sides.

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 1945 has been awarded to Wolfgang Pauli, whose name is so well known to all physicists that he needs no detailed characterization. While still a student, he wrote his monograph on the theory of relativity, which entered the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences and is the best exposition of the theory of relativity. He was the first to introduce the quantum number of spin into spectroscopy and formulated the famous exclusion principle that bears his name. He also was the first to create the quantum theory (nonrelativistic) of electrons with spin. To him belongs the neutrino hypothesis, which untied a knot of contradictions in the theory of β-spectra, as well as a large number of important works on many questions of quantum physics.

As is known, Pauli was a professor at the Higher Technical School in Zurich, Switzerland. During the war he was invited to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA, where he is still working at present. Pauli is the author of an exemplary exposition of the fundamental questions of quantum mechanics, the Russian translation of which is in the portfolio of Gostekhizdat and, we may hope, will soon see the light of day.