Born: 25 February 1896, Germany
Died: 24 September 1978
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Ida Tacke
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
German chemist Ida Noddack was the first scientist to propose the concept of nuclear fission, as well as co-discovering the element rhenium, the last stable element to have been discovered to date. In 1934, physicist Enrico Fermi suggested that if uranium was bombarded with neutrons, it could possibly produce atomic elements heavier than uranium. In a paper responding to Fermi’s discovery, Noddack stated that bombarding uranium could actually produce smaller atoms—in other words, nuclear fission. This process also produces massive amount of energy, but she did not pursue the idea with experiments, possibly due to expense or other priorities. It wasn’t until four years later, in 1938, that chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, in collaboration with Lise Meitner, demonstrated that such fission is indeed possible. But when Noddack reminded everyone that it was, in fact, originally her idea, her assertion fell on deaf ears. When Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944, Noddack and Meitner were both excluded.
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Ida Noddack was a German chemist and physicist. In 1934, she proposed the idea of nuclear fission. She, along with her husband Walter Noddack and Otto Berg, discovered rhenium (element 75). Noddack was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry three times.
In 1934, Ida Noddack critiqued Fermi’s 1934 neutron bombardment experiments and his proposal of creating transuranic elements. Her paper, “On Element 93,” highlighted Fermi’s failure to exclude lighter elements than uranium from his proofs, not just down to lead. This paper is historically significant for Noddack’s accurate critique and her suggestion of nucleus fragmentation, a precursor to nuclear fission. However, her theory lacked experimental proof and solid grounding, leading to general dismissal and even mockery, notably by Otto Hahn and others.