Radiochemistry and collaboration
Hahn received his chemistry doctorate in Marburg in 1901 and subsequently worked with William Ramsay in London and Rutherford in Montreal. His Berlin collaboration with Meitner began in 1907, combining chemical separations and radiation measurements. In 1918 they identified long-lived protactinium.
References: [1]
Chemical evidence and physical interpretation
After Meitner fled Nazi Germany in 1938, Hahn and Strassmann continued the experiments. In December they identified barium and informed her by letter. Meitner and her nephew Frisch used mass–energy relationships to explain the splitting of a heavy nucleus. The chemical evidence and physical interpretation together established fission.
Recognition and postwar institutions
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1944 was awarded to Hahn alone in 1945. He subsequently helped reorganise German research institutions and became the Max Planck Society’s first president in 1948, serving as honorary president from 1960.