Otto+Frisch

Otto Frisch (1904 - 1979) Daniel Shalinsky + Miranda Cardinal


 * Early life:**

Otto Robert Frisch was born on October 1, 1904, in Vienna. Otto Frisch is the son of a painter and a concert pianist, he was very good at math at a young age, but, he followed his aunt Lise Meitner’s passion for physics. In 1922 he entered the University of Vienna to study physics, feeling that a career in mathematics would be too boring. Frisch graduated from the University of Vienna in 1926 In the 1920’s Austrian physics courses did not offer a bachelor's degree, so Frisch graduated with a Doctorate in Philosophy. He then spent a year in a private laboratory that manufactured X-ray dosimeters, devices that measure the amount of radiation a person has absorbed.


 * Work Life:**

Otto Frisch then worked at universities in Berlin and Hamburg, but was kicked out under German racial laws in 1933. He moved to the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. The rise to power of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany that year made Frisch decide to move to London, where he was hired at Birkbeck College and worked on cloud chamber technology and artificial radioactivity. In 1934 **Niels Bohr** (Badass physicist) invited Frisch to join his Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He continued the work he had begun in London, discovering a further two new isotopes, before becoming interested in the collisions between neutrons and nuclei. Frisch became involved with explaining nuclear fission in 1938, He spent Christmas (Hanukkah?) with his aunt Lise Meitner. She had received a letter from Otto Hahn reporting a collision between uranium nuclei and neutrons could produce barium, an element of about half the atomic mass of uranium. It had previously been thought that these reactions would only generate products with roughly the same atomic mass as the bombarded elements. 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. Working with the physicist Rudolf Peierls, he demonstrated that the fissioning of uranium had the potential to create a volatile chain reaction which, when using uranium-235, could be used to develop an extremely destructive weapon.


 * Manhattan Project:**

As the Manhattan Project was underway in the US, Frisch was left out of the research because his foreign status posed a security risk. Ironically, it was his previous discoveries that had contributed to the possibility of such a weapon being built in the first place. In 1943, along with many other scientists that had been exiled from Germany, Otto Frisch was naturalized and permitted to work for the top-secret program in Los Alamos, New Mexico.When the first atomic bomb was tested at Trinity Frisch couldn't find his dark goggles so had to sit with his back to the explosion. He saw the first mushroom cloud, which looked 'a bit like a strawberry', or 'a red-hot elephant standing on its trunk'. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Frisch was disturbed that most of his friends were celebrating. Few of the scientists at Los Alamos saw a need for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.


 * Post world war 2:**

After World War II, Frisch returned to England to work for the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell and held the Jackson Chair of Physics at Cambridge from 1947 to 1979. media type="youtube" key="qE3p27Pclo4" height="315" width="420" Otto Frisch died on 22 September, 1979 in Cambridge, England.