Fissão nuclear e transurânicos em nove traduções

Abstract

We translated and commented on nine seminal papers on the discoveries of nuclear fission and transuranium elements, of great importance due to the erratic paths followed by the scientists as a consequence of the difficulties in articulating experimental evidence with theoretical expectations. We present two papers authored by Enrico Fermi, in which he describes his research on the bombardment of various elements with neutrons, including uranium, and concludes the possibility of having produced the first transuranium elements; Ida Noddack’s criticism to the methodologies developed by Fermi and concluding that lighter elements could have been produced by those reactions; the research papel by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, in which they indicate that they chemically detected barium in the products of uranium bombardment with neutrons; the letter to the editor written by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, physically explaining the possible fission of the nuclei, based on the evidences offered by Hahn and Strassmann; the letter to the editor by Frisch, presenting empirical evidence for nuclear fission; the letter to the editor written by Edwin McMillan and Philip Abelson, in which they present their methodology for synthesizing element 93 and the chemical analysis carried out to confirm its identity, and, finally, two letters to the editor written by Glenn Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Joseph Kennedy and Arthur Wahl, in which they present the physical methodology for synthetizing element 94 and the chemical techniques employed to confirm its identity. In the comment sections, we present the historical contexts of the papers, which involved the prelude and outbreak of the Second World War, nazi persecution, changes of institutions, scientific secrets and analyzes of the techniques and trains of thought that led to the conclusion of each paper.