German chemist · 1896–1978
Ida Tacke
Ida Tacke, later Ida Noddack, co-discovered rhenium in 1925. In 1934 she suggested that uranium nuclei might split into pieces, years before nuclear fission was confirmed.
How Rhenium was found
Tacke worked with Walter Noddack and Otto Berg to search for elements 43 and 75. She did much of the painstaking chemistry, concentrating trace elements from tonnes of mineral samples.
Element 75 was identified by its X-ray lines and named rhenium. In 1928 the team isolated a gram of it, enough to measure its properties.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Born 1896 · Died 1978
Tacke was born in Lackhausen, near Wesel, and was one of the first women in Germany to earn a degree in chemistry. She married Walter Noddack in 1926.
When Enrico Fermi claimed to have made elements beyond uranium, she argued that the nucleus might instead have broken into large fragments. The idea was ignored until Hahn, Strassmann, Meitner and Frisch demonstrated fission in 1938–39. She was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize.
Also known for
- First to propose nuclear fission, in 1934
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1925.