Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Université Catholique de Louvain, and Annette Lykknes, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room
In their talk, Van Tiggelen and Lykknes will present Ida Noddack-Thacke’s career as a woman scientist and the main debates following her most important contributions. Thacke studied chemical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin between 1915 and 1921, and was employed as a chemist at Allgemeine Elektrizität Gesellschaft (AEG). She resigned to work for free at Siemans-Halske and at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin, searching for missing elements 43 and 75. She collaborated with (and married) the head of the chemistry department at the Reichsanstalt, Walter Noddack. Together they were acknowledged for the discovery of element 75, which led to three joint Nobel Prize nominations. Thacke is also known for proposing nuclear fission in 1934, although this was not taken seriously by the scientific community.