By Sara Thompson
Image obtained from Wikimedia Commons attributed to user Dome_de
Special to The Enterprise
Born in the Rhine region of Germany in 1896, as she grew Ida Tacke knew she did not want to be a schoolteacher and instead focused on being a researcher. She enrolled in a college program in 1915, just six years after women were allowed to study in Berlin’s universities and was part of some of the first female student cohorts in the country. In 1918, she graduated with her degree in chemical and metallurgical engineering. She was one of first women in Germany to study chemistry and worked in a laboratory in Berlin after graduation. It was here she would meet and work with Walter Noddack, whom she would marry in 1926. Both before and after their marriage, they were equal work partners and were a great example of the phrase “two minds are greater than one”.
When the periodic table of the elements was created, sometime between 1869-1871, there were gaps left for the undiscovered elements at the time. Since then, chemists all over the world had worked to fill in those gaps, and the Noddacks were no different. They were particularly interested in the missing atomic numbers of 43 and 75. Using techniques of electron bombardment and measuring x-rays emitted, they announced the detection of those two atoms. In 1925, a sample of atomic number 75 was collected, and they named the element ‘rhenium’ after the area Ida had been born and raised. However, element 43 was not able to be reproduced and other scientists required the use of particle acceleration to achieve the generation of that element, so the Noddacks’ previous work was dismissed for others and the element would be named ‘technetium’. Despite the dismissal of one of the elements they worked on, Ida and her husband were integral in the work to discover and produce rhenium.
In 1934, scientist Enrico Fermi claimed to have produced a heavier element than uranium by bombarding the element with neutrons. Ida read his publication and then produced one of her own criticizing it. She pointed out several flaws in his proofs and theorized that the bombardment would not produce a larger element but would instead cause the original to break up into smaller isotopes that were not immediate neighbors of the original element. Despite her paper being dismissed by the scientific community at the time, her paper would later be found to be correct and become the first mention of what would later be known as nuclear fission.
Even though she was allowed an education, finding paid work was difficult and instead she chose to be an unpaid researcher alongside her husband. This never deterred her from standing up for herself and her research, and instead continued to push and advocate for herself and her theories. She retired in 1968, having been nominated for a Nobel Prize three times, but never winning. She passed away in 1978, in the familiar Rhine region of Germany she called home.
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