Path to Nuclear Fission, The 1x56

A portrait of the lives and the tumultuous times of two remarkable scientists whose extraordinary collaboration culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of the atom that changed the future. The program explores the development of atomic science in the first part of the twentieth century, Meitner’s early struggles for an education and her efforts to make her way in the male-dominated world of physics, Hahn’s early work and independent discoveries, the remarkable collaboration between the two, and the racial persecution and political oppression that resulted in Meitner’s name being excluded from the fission discovery, and the Nobel Prize going to Hahn alone.