Strassmann, << STRAHS mahn, >> Fritz (1902-1980), was a German chemist. His work with Otto Hahn, a German chemist, and Lise Meitner, an Austrian nuclear physicist, led to the discovery of nuclear fission (the splitting of atomic nuclei). In 1938, Strassmann and Hahn found that the bombardment of uranium atoms with neutrons produces the element barium. Meitner and Austrian physicist Otto R. Frisch explained in 1939 that the neutrons had split uranium nuclei, producing nuclei of barium and other elements.
Strassmann was born in Boppard, Germany, on Feb. 22, 1902. He studied at the Technological Institute in Hanover. In 1929, he joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin (now the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz). He became director of the institute in 1946. In 1985, Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to victims of the Holocaust, honored Strassmann for risking his life to save a Jew from the Nazis in 1943. Strassmann died on April 22, 1980.
See also Hahn, Otto ; Meitner, Lise .
