TITLE:
Short History of Nuclear Decays Including Nuclear Fission
AUTHORS:
Dorin N. Poenaru, Radu A. Gherghescu, Joseph H. Hamilton, Horst Stöcker
KEYWORDS:
Alpha Decay, Heavy Particle Decay, Spontaneous Fission
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.11 No.4,
December
27,
2022
ABSTRACT: A short history of the different kinds of nuclear decay modes (α decay, β decay, γ decay, induced
fission, spontaneous fission, ternary and multi-cluster fission, fissioning
shape isomers, and cluster radioactivities) is presented below, showing how the
important research activities at the end of 19th century and the beginning of
the 20th one, lead to the discovery of atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford in
1911. We shall start with X-rays—a precursor of all these phenomena. The first
observation of alpha-, beta-, and gamma radiations was made by Antoine Henri
Becquerel in 1896, who observed that beta-rays are deviated by a magnetic
field. Marie and Pierre Curie coined the name radioactivity after they produced
two new elements: polonium and radium. Alpha particles were first described in
the investigations of radioactivity by Ernest Rutherford in 1899, and by 1907
they were identified as He2+ ions. In 1928, George Gamow had solved
the theory of alpha decay via tunneling through a potential barrier. The alpha
particle is trapped in a potential well by the nucleus. According to the
principles of quantum mechanics, it has a small probability of tunneling
through the barrier and escape from the nucleus. Gamow solved a model potential
for the nucleus and derived, from first principles, a relationship between the
half-life of the decay, and the energy of the emission, which had been
previously discovered empirically, and was known as the Geiger-Nuttall law.