Disintegration of Heavy Nuclei

Abstract

THROUGH the kindness of the authors I have been informed of the content of the letters¹ recently sent to the Editor of NATURE by Prof. Meitner and Dr. Frisch. In the first letter, these authors propose an interpretation of the remarkable findings of Hahn and Strassmann as indication for a new type of disintegration of heavy nuclei, consisting in a fission of the nucleus into two parts of approximately equal masses and charges with release of enormous energy. In the second letter, Dr. Frisch describes experiments in which these parts are directly detected by the very large ionization they produce. Due to the extreme importance of this discovery, I should be glad to add a few comments on the mechanism of the fission process from the point of view of the general ideas, developed in recent years, to account for the main features of the nuclear reactions hitherto observed.