What was otto hahn famous for

Britain went a little crazy. For a few disorienting weeks, everything seemed up for grabs, including the monarchy itself. She was born Lady Diana Spencer, the daughter of an earl, in Althorp, her childhood home, was a stately, drafty pile, crammed with priceless works of art. Her childhood was privileged but lonely — her parents had a terrible divorce — and her education indifferent. In fact, nothing remarkable at all happened to Diana until, at age 19, she married Charles, the Prince of Wales, in view of thousands of strangers millions, if you count the television audience , wearing a voluminous puffball of a dress that drowned her slender frame.

If the wedding was a gossamer fairy tale, the marriage was a real-life nightmare. Diana was emotional, fragile, needy, anorexic, bulimic; Charles came from the stiff-upper-lip school of interpersonal relations and had a longtime married girlfriend, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Charles and Diana had two sons. She eventually found various lovers, too. They died together in a high-speed chase in Paris, fleeing from paparazzi pursuing them in cars and motorcycles after a date. The power of the emotion — and the frenzy whipped up by the tabloid newspapers — all but forced Queen Elizabeth to break with centuries of tradition and protocol and make a public address to the nation.

Elton John sang at the funeral. Diana is nearly as vivid a figure in death as in life. She lives on in her sons, William and Harry, who have talked in recent years about her effect on them.

The young man in question was Christopher McCandless. His identity was not confirmed for weeks, but in time he would become internationally famous as a bold, or very imprudent, figure. McCandless died alone in an abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail, a desolate stretch of backcountry near Denali, in August He was surrounded by his meager provisions: a. Before Mr. McCandless died, from starvation aggravated by accidental poisoning, he had survived for more than days on nothing but a pound sack of rice and what he could hunt and forage in the unforgiving taiga.

Jon Krakauer, at the time a freelance writer, heard about Mr. The editor wanted Mr. Krakauer to write a long article about Mr. McCandless on a tight deadline, and he delivered. Krakauer said in a telephone interview. Over the next few years he dug into Mr. He chronicled Mr.

A film based on the book, starring Emile Hirsch as Mr. McCandless and directed by Sean Penn, was released in McCandless came from a well-off family on the East Coast. He graduated from Emory University with honors, then disappeared in He donated virtually all the money in his bank account to Oxfam, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty, then drove west before abandoning his car and burning the cash he had left.

He deserted his family and a privileged life without looking back. McCandless canoed into Mexico, hitchhiked north and worked odd jobs along the way. He often roamed alone, but left an impression on many of the friends he made along the way.

An older man named Ron Franz even offered to adopt him; Mr. McCandless gently turned him down. His parents were worried, but knew that long, improvised jaunts were nothing new for their son. Some readers see Mr. Many others, especially native Alaskans, have argued that he must have been mentally ill, suicidal or hubristic, and that it was irresponsible for Mr.

Krakauer to glorify his story. Walt McCandless and Mr. Krakauer both disagreed with that assessment. In Mr. McCandless said in an interview. But she said she does feel her parents should accept some blame. Walt and Billie McCandless said they did not want to comment on the memoir. By the time Mr. It said:. An earlier version of this article, using information from Mr. By the time he was 10, he and his brothers were pop sensations performing as the Jackson 5. The group had four No. By 20, Jackson wanted to break away from his overbearing father, his demanding siblings and the Jackson 5 sound.

It won eight Grammy Awards, spent two years on the Billboard album chart and sold more than million copies around the world. It was also hugely successful, with five No. Jackson died on June 25, , from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol. There was a worldwide outpouring of grief. Radio stations played marathons of his music. And fans were left to decide which Jackson they would remember, as the pop music critic Jon Pareles wrote in an appraisal in The New York Times :.

On Aug. Bryant was working alone in the store when Till went in to buy bubblegum. It is not clear what happened inside, but soon afterward Ms. Bryant stormed out, presumably to get a pistol from her car parked outside. Till, unaware of the danger, whistled, and his cousins, now panicked, quickly drove him away. Bryant later claimed that Till had flirted with her on a dare. The details would later change depending on when she told the story.

Four days later, around a. Milam pounded on the door of the Wright family home where Till was staying with a pistol. His body was so mutilated that it could be identified only by the silver signet ring, still on his finger. People left in tears. Some fainted. The murder became a rallying point for the nascent civil rights movement. The Rev. The Bryant brothers were found not guilty.

After the acquittal, they kissed their wives, lit cigars and posed for pictures. And later, protected from double jeopardy, they boasted about how they had murdered Till. She tried to meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he refused. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.

It provoked international outrage and pressure on political leaders in the United States. Young black Americans grasped the precariousness of their own lives, and figures like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Till Mobley became a teacher and civil rights activist herself, as did many whites. As Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, the rebel of 19th-century philosophy who died years ago on Aug.

Nietzsche wrote with the confidence and vehemence of any pundit. He posited extreme precursors to moral relativism and self-actualization, two ideas that have become prevalent during the last few decades. His often-aphoristic writing style would be perfect for Twitter, where there are many accounts in his name. Whether he would be pleased about how his ideas have influenced our culture is another matter, but it would be very difficult to argue that they have not.

Perhaps the most well-known example is the frequently made accusation that his writings fostered a sense of Teutonic racial superiority that Germany and then Hitler would use to justify embarking on two world wars, even though Nietzsche himself had repudiated his nationality and claimed to be descended from Polish nobles. His ideas might seem more familiar to us now, but at his death they were controversial, even shocking.

Those enemies included organized religion, especially Christianity, democracy, mediocrity, nationalism and women. Nietzsche railed against these and other adversaries on pages often densely packed with allusions, symbolism and language closer to romantic poetry than fusty metaphysics.

Here is a sampling of his best-known writings:. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. God is dead! God remains dead!

And we have killed him! How shall we console our selves, the most murderous of all murderers? Unlike many of his philosophical predecessors, Nietzsche did not argue for a specific weltanschauung, or worldview, even though his writings may suggest one.

He distrusted any thinker who proposed a comprehensive system for interpreting the world, and he often wrote in a manner that allowed for multiple interpretations. A critical examination of his work in The New York Times in explained his approach:.

Nietzsche is not a philosopher in the strict and technical sense of the word. He has no system or consistent body of thought professing to explain all aspects of the universe. He does not expressly deal with epistemology, ontology or, indeed, with metaphysics in general. He was born on Oct. His father died when he was young, and his mother hoped he would join the church, but by the time he went to the University of Bonn he later moved to the University of Leipzig he had decided to study the classics and pursue a career in philology.

He earned a professorship in Greek at the University of Basel in Switzerland when he was just 24 and became inspired by Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer. But his ideas endured, and have since intrigued innumerable thinkers. But she was also a girl next door, a teenager with her own street style who rose above the vulgarity of other stars. Aaliyah Dana Haughton died 15 years ago along with eight other passengers of a small airplane that crashed in the Bahamas.

She was 22, but she had already reached a level of fame few could achieve in a lifetime. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Detroit, Aaliyah was raised for stardom. At 11, she sang on stage with Gladys Knight. In one of her more gossip-provoking moments, it was widely reported that she had secretly married R. Kelly, who was in his late 20s.

Their marriage was annulled. That album sold two million copies. He soon realized that it was the story he had been waiting to write for 20 years. Crime, he decided, could be the perfect vehicle. Capote disagreed. The killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, both of them ex-convicts, had intended to rob the family, which they knew to be well-off.

But they were surprised to find almost no money in the house; everyone but the robbers, it seemed, knew that the farm owner, Herbert Clutter, paid only with checks. Before arriving at the farm, Smith and Hickock had agreed that no witnesses could be left behind, whether or not the robbery was successful. The Clutters were tied up in separate rooms and killed at close range by shotgun blasts. Made into a book, it became a national best seller, despite assertions that it is not entirely factual.

And it brought Capote even more financial and social success. The book, disturbing and gory, took its toll on him, though. Like a bat out of hell. Capote formed a bond with Perry Smith; though strikingly different, they both had endured turbulent childhoods. Capote knew that before he could finish his book, the ending — the executions of the two convicted murderers — had to happen. Clarke said in an email. Siegel, who died last January , asked the obviously inebriated Capote what would happen to him if he did not give up alcohol and drugs.

He was not able to kick his destructive habits. Six years later, a coroner attributed his death , at 59, to liver failure. At a memorial service , Robert L. Newton Gun Club carried their rifles on a march in Dallas. And last month, in response to more police shootings, they took them to another rally in Dallas in which five officers were fatally shot by a veteran of the Army Reserve, not a club member. The Dallas club began in after an officer there killed an unarmed black man and wounded a child with a stray bullet but was not disciplined.

The name Huey P. Newton advocated armed self-defense in black communities, where the organization also provided social services. They would patrol the streets, guns drawn, turning them on drug dealers and police officers alike.

Expressing a willingness to defend oneself with weapons was hardly revolutionary. The Black Panthers, which never grew beyond a few thousand members, tried to combine socialism and black nationalism.

Its charter called for full employment, decent housing, and the end of police brutality. Unlike black separatists, the Panthers welcomed all races and found wealthy liberals willing to give them money. Historians have detailed its mistreatment of female members, extortion, drug dealing, embezzlement and murder.

At least 19 Panthers were killed in shootouts with one another, the authorities or other black revolutionaries. As many members went off to prison and the group dwindled, Newton became a despotic and paranoid drug addict, wielding dictatorial powers with a small coterie, and knocking off anyone in his way. In , he earned a Ph. But he was shot to death on Aug.

He was 47, a victim of the same streets he had once tried to make safe. During the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Not Forgotten is resurfacing obituaries about some of the greatest Olympic athletes of all time. Coachman was in a position to know. That set an Olympic record and — because Coachman had achieved it on the first try — earned her the gold medal.

When Coachman died in , at 90, the fact that she was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal was the salient point of her obituary in The New York Times.

Sixty-six years earlier, however, The Times had not even mentioned the fact in its dispatch from London. The correspondent, Allison Danzig , barely noted that Coachman had set a record. Viewers could see with their own eyes what newspaper reporters and radio commentators of earlier eras did not necessarily emphasize.

Coachman was treated almost as a nonperson on her homecoming to Albany, Ga. The mayor refused to shake her hand. Some of it had to do with one of her gifts. Rhoden of The Times in That was the climax. I won the gold medal. I proved to my mother, my father, my coach and everybody else that I had gone to the end of my rope. At the Olympics, maybe. The truth is that her career as an exemplar was just beginning. If you could have dinner with one person who is no longer with us, and whose obituary was published in The New York Times, who would it be, and why that person?

Not Forgotten is asking that question of a variety of influential people this summer in a series of posts called Breaking Bread. Today we have Dominique Dawes , the first African-American female gymnast to win an individual medal.

If I could choose to have dinner with somebody who has passed away, I would choose to dine with Mother Angelica. She is the only woman to have founded and led a cable network for over 20 years. Mother Angelica would understand this meal: She was raised around blacks and poor Italians in a tough Canton, Ohio, neighborhood. She knew people, she understood their plights, she was one of them!

And she knew resilience most of all, raised by a single mother from an early age after her father had abandoned them. I often wondered how she overcame this abandonment, learned to forgive her father and ultimately trust in God? She was a cloistered nun, in a convent, yet she was seen by hundreds of millions of people worldwide as the host of a series on EWTN. How was she able to embrace both of these so very opposite vocations? I am an introvert by nature, and performing in front of millions during the Olympic Games gave me anxiety, as does speaking at events in front of thousands now.

And I would ask her how I might help others, whether they suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction, physical ailments or the pain of abandonment or divorce. Her whole life, after all, was dedicated to helping others, especially the disenfranchised. Mother Angelica, I would ask, how can we here on earth emulate what you did, even in a smaller way, offering help to others in a world that so desperately needs it?

The Sultan of Swat. The Caliph of Clout. The Great Bambino. When baseball fans hear these monikers, nearly 70 years after Babe Ruth died on Aug. But before Ruth tantalized fans with his prodigious power, he was practically helpless.

From the time he was 7 years old, Ruth grew up in St. He might have amounted to nothing without the help of one dedicated mentor. George Herman Ruth Jr. His mother was the former Katherine Schamberger. He was a rambunctious child who routinely skipped school, drank and taunted local police officers around his home.

He became so unruly that his parents sent him to St. At St. His parents had signed over custodial rights to the school and essentially washed their hands of him, leaving Ruth alone and desperately in need of a father figure. Then he met Brother Matthias, a brawny, 6-foot-6 disciplinarian and assistant athletic director at St.

Matthias was widely credited with introducing Ruth to baseball. Ruth learned to play during the dead-ball era of the early 20th century, when hitters swung down on the ball, kept it inside the park and relied on speed as their greatest asset. Baseball was strategic, built on grounders, bunts and stolen bases instead of power.

Matthias had a different approach. He belted majestic fly balls deep into the St. That summer he was acquired by the Boston Red Sox, for whom he would win his first three championships as a pitcher and an outfielder. Ruth played 15 seasons with the Bombers, amassing four more championships. His records include a. An inveterate cigar smoker, he learned he had throat cancer a decade later and died from the disease on this day in Most boxers battle for the title, money and acclaim.

Stevenson, who stood 6 feet 5 inches, weighed pounds and battered opponents with a deft left jab and a sledgehammer straight right, won three consecutive Olympic heavyweight gold medals for Cuba, in in Munich, in Montreal and in Moscow.

His victory made him the first Olympic boxer to earn three consecutive gold medals in the same division. But he might have had a chance for another: Stevenson was still a tremendous fighter when Cuba boycotted the Olympics in Los Angeles. He won the last of his three amateur boxing world titles two years later at the age of After his first two medals, boxing promoters were practically slavering at the potential ticket sales of a Cold War-era match between Stevenson, a product of Communist Cuba, and Muhammad Ali , who died in June at Ali told The New York Times in that he thought Stevenson was a promising amateur fighter but that he was probably not ready for the pros.

Stevenson never took the bait. He had remained a promising amateur at his death, in Havana on June 11, You make a lot of money, but how many boxers in history do we know that died poor? While the world was consumed with war in the first half of the s, three men were subsumed with growing unrest across India, with the fates of tens of millions of their compatriots in their hands.

At the stroke of midnight on Aug. But there was a fatal flaw: There were no borders. Indians had struggled for decades to rid themselves of British rule, galvanized by the nonviolent movement led by Gandhi. Their efforts were kept in check by ruthless military force, but by the end of World War II, Britain lacked the will and the means to defeat the campaign. They reluctantly relinquished India after years, leaving the country at the brink of implosion.

Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah were divided on what should happen once the British left. Gandhi, more an idealist than a realist, wanted an undivided nation; he chose to remain out of government. The British negotiated with the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, who believed that a separate state was the only way to protect the rights of Muslims, who were a minority; and the mostly Hindu Indian National Congress, led by Nehru, who grudgingly went along with the British decision to divide India on the basis of religion.

But it prolonged the uncertainty for millions and very likely increased the loss of life to come. Otto Hahn - was a German chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of nuclear fission. Hahn was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry and is widely regarded as the "father of nuclear chemistry. This discovery earned Hahn the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in , and led directly to the development of the atomic bomb. As a chemist, Hahn was initially reluctant to propose a revolutionary discovery in physics.

Lise Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, in Sweden, came to the same conclusion and were able to work out the basic mathematics of nuclear fission--the term that was coined by Frisch. Over the next few months, Meitner and Frisch published two articles discussing and experimentally confirming this hypothesis. It seems to me that what makes the science behind this discovery so remarkable is that it was achieved by purely chemical means.

Hahn was conscripted in , and after a spell in the infantry worked reluctantly on poison gasses. Meitner volunteered as a radiographer with the Austrian army, and endured considerable hardship before returning to civilian life in Later that year, during a period of leave, Hahn re-joined her at the KWG, where they isolated the most stable isotope of another new element — protactinium. When peace returned in their association resumed on a new basis.

Yet this error or was it a joke? Meanwhile, investigation of the properties of radioactive elements proceeded less dramatically, with Hahn and Meitner playing significant if unspectacular roles.

The history of those troubled times has often been retold, but it still has lessons for us today. After years of economic misery, many German voters were convinced that foreign adversaries and domestic traitors were responsible for their woes. They responded by installing an aggressively nationalistic government, pledged to create a hostile environment for all those it regarded as enemies of the state.

New laws barred them from the professions, the civil service, and the universities, generating an exodus of experts which included several past and future Nobel laureates. Hahn was aware that by moving to a university post outside Germany he might deprive a Jewish colleague of a lifeline.

Meitner, being an Austrian citizen, remained partially exempt from these repressive laws — until Austria was incorporated into the German state in However, assisted by fellow-scientists in the Netherlands she crossed the border safely. Meitner found sanctuary in Sweden, and continued corresponding with Hahn.

Soon he had startling news for her. Lacking an electrical charge themselves, neutrons were not deflected by positively charged atomic nuclei, making them ideal missiles for probing the heart of the atom. Physicists and radiochemists in several countries soon began directing them at a variety of elements. The work of Meitner and Hahn standing, far right was informed and embraced by other eminent scientists, including James Chadwick seated, far left who discovered the neutron.

In Italy, Enrico Fermi announced that by bombarding uranium with neutrons he had created heavier elements, previously unknown to science. Although his claims were disputed by the German physicist Ida Noddack, they gained wide support, since they were compatible with the generally accepted model of the atomic nucleus. As a rough analogy, imagine shooting raisins at a large cake. Some might hit the target squarely and be absorbed, producing a slightly heavier cake.

Others might have a glancing impact, detaching small fragments to leave the cake a little lighter. No-one would expect a single shot to cleave it into two different cakes, each about half the size of the original.

Fermi had discovered earlier that when hit with neutrons, the element uranium sent off radioactive products. Fermi believed that these products were small particles from the uranium atom, and so were composed very similar to Uranium. Hahn decided to test this theory, as he thought maybe the uranium atom was being broken down into something else.

What he found ended up changing nuclear chemistry forever. He found convincing evidence that the products that came from the bombardment of uranium with neutrons was actually a radioactive form of barium, a much smaller and lighter element. This suggested that the uranium atom actually split into two much smaller atoms, and the idea that atoms could be split was born.

In the case of Hahn's uranium to barium breakdown, about one-fifth of a neutron's mass got converted into energy. The discovery of nuclear fission had many implications.