Then in 1934, Ida noticed errors in the work done by “…Enrico Fermi’s transuranic elements, pointing out that the products of neutron bombardment of uranium had not been tested for elements below lead in the periodic table” (Dorothy & Ogilvie, 2000, 947). This lead Ida’s famous quote:
“One could assumed…that when neutrons are used to produce nuclear disintegrations, some distinctly new nuclear reactions take place which have not been observed previously… [Perhaps] when heavy nuclei are bombarded by neutrons… the nucleus breaks up into several fragments” (as cited in Hobson, 2007, p 388).
Thus making Ida Noddack the first individual to propose nuclear fission (Habashi, 1997; Dorothy & Ogilvie, 2000); however, her unique intuition was ahead of the nuclear physics paradigm at that time and she never received any credit. Then, in 1938, Otto Han and Fritz Strassmann announced the discovery of nuclear fission. Ida diligently worked at having at least some credit given to her, since she did in fact publish the remark in a paper titled: Uber Das Delemnt 93 (Dorothy & Ogilvie, 2000). However, Ida wouldn’t gain any credit until later in the future.
An interesting argument put forth by Dorothy and Ogilvie (2000) attempts to explain why Ida never achieved success in proving nuclear fission: “[p]erhaps if she had had the courage of her convictions, she would have performed the Hahn and Strassmann chemistry five years before they did” (p. 947). This outlandish remark by Dorothy and Ogilvie suggests a level of arrogance and ignorance on their part. They suggest that she was against the establishment, but they neglect to explore other social dynamics that may have oppressed Ida from finding her courage and pursuing her convictions.
However, Habashi (1997) suggests that her “…lack of institutional support and the publication of her work only in German journals were factors that prevented her suggestion of uranium fission from receiving any serious consideration” (p. 223). Habashi does go onto discuss the nature of the mansurium controversy and how this led to poor support from the scientific community, but this author also fails to socially deconstruct the forces that Ida was facing during her groundbreaking interpretation of Fermi’s work on transuranic elements. Ida would later be nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1933, 1935, and 1937, for her interpretations, but the prize would be awarded to the people who actually performed the experiments (Habashi, 1997).
