Meitner and Frisch later explained these results as nuclear fission. Noddack critiqued this conclusion on chemical grounds. Enrico Fermi: 1934 note suspects (incorrectly) production of transuranic elements by bombarding thorium and uranium with neutrons.This paper is at the ChemTeam site as is this photo. Kasimir Fajans: 1913 paper on the radioactive displacement law and isotopes.View page images of original (in French). BĂ©mont: December 1898 announcement of a new strongly radioactive element, radium. Pierre and Marie Sklodowska Curie and G.Pierre and Marie Sklodowska Curie: 1898 announcement of a new radioactive element, polonium.Marie Sklodowska Curie: 1898 paper surveying the material world for radioactivity, finding it in uranium and thorium minerals, and suggesting that a new radioactive element may be found in pitchblende.(Link to a biographical sketch of Cockcroft and one of Walton.) John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton: 1932 paper on the disintegration of lithium by fast protons: artificial transmutation.
(View part of his apparatus or biographical information on Chadwick.) James Chadwick: 1932 letter and subsequent detailed paper explaining experimental observations by invoking a new particle, the neutron.Harriet Brooks: 1904 description of a volatile radioactive product from radium: Marie Sklodowska Curie was not the only woman active in early research on radioactivity! This paper is at the UCLA site on contributions of women to physics, as is this biographical information on Brooks.Niels Bohr (1939): liquid drop model of fission in wake of Meitner-Frisch paper.View page images of the original papers ( 24 February and 2 March) in French, a biographical sketch of Becquerel and view a picture of a photographic plate from which he made his discovery. In between the two reports, Becquerel realized that he was not dealing with ordinary phosphorescence (although he persisted in believing that it was phosphorescence of some sort). Henri Becquerel: two brief reports about radioactivity read to the French Academy of Sciences one week apart in 1896.This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture. Francis Aston (1920): early report of mass spectra showing isotopes of stable elements.Francis Aston on mass spectra of isotopes of neon (1920).
(Link to a photo of his apparatus or biographical sketch of Aston.) Francis Aston (1919): early report of mass spectra, suggesting that isotopes have integer masses.This paper is at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Trapnell (1949): An eyewitness account of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Selected Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry Selected Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry The nucleus: isotopes and radioactivity