Issued to mark the centenary of Otto Hahn's birth, this coin honors the chemist who, alongside Fritz Strassmann, first demonstrated nuclear fission in December 1938 — a discovery made in Berlin weeks before Hahn's colleague Lise Meitner, already exiled to Sweden, provided the theoretical explanation he could not. Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone, a decision that remains contested among historians of science.
Issued to mark the centenary of Otto Hahn's birth, this coin honors the chemist who, alongside Fritz Strassmann, first demonstrated nuclear fission in December 1938 — a discovery made in Berlin weeks before Hahn's colleague Lise Meitner, already exiled to Sweden, provided the theoretical explanation he could not. Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone, a decision that remains contested among historians of science.