Editing Lise Meitner (section)

==World War I and the discovery of protactinium==
In July 1914—shortly before the outbreak of [[World War I]]—Hahn was called to active duty with the army in a {{lang|de|[[Landwehr]]}} regiment.{{sfn|Van der Kloot|2004|p=150}}{{sfn|Spence|1970|pp=286–287}} Meitner undertook X-ray technician training, and a course on anatomy at the city hospital in [[Lichterfelde (Berlin)|Lichterfelde]].{{sfn|Hahn|1966|p=66}} Meanwhile, she completed both the work on the [[beta ray]] spectrum that she had begun before the war with Hahn and Baeyer, and her own study of the uranium [[decay chain]].{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=55}} In July 1915, she returned to Vienna, where she joined the Austrian Army as an X-ray nurse-technician. Her unit was deployed to the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern front]] in Poland, and she also served on the [[Italian front (World War I)|Italian front]] before being discharged in September 1916.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=59–62}}

[[File:Dahlem Thielallee Hahn-Meitner-Bau.JPG|thumb|left|Former [[Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry]] building in Berlin. Badly damaged by bombing during [[World War&nbsp;II]], it was restored and became part of the [[Free University of Berlin]] in 1948. It was renamed the Otto Hahn Building in 1956, and the Hahn-Meitner Building in 2010.{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=368}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Ehrung der Physikerin Lise Meitner Aus dem Otto-Hahn-Bau wird der Hahn-Meitner-Bau |publisher=Free University of Berlin |language=de |trans-title=Honouring physicist Lise Meitner as the Otto Hahn building becomes the Hahn-Meitner building |url=https://www.fu-berlin.de/campusleben/campus/2010/101028_hahn-meitner/index.html |date=28 October 2010 |access-date=10 June 2020 |archive-date=3 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803124727/https://www.fu-berlin.de/campusleben/campus/2010/101028_hahn-meitner/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref>]]

Meitner returned to the KWI for Chemistry and her research in October. In January 1917, she was appointed as head of her own physics section. The Hahn-Meitner Laboratory was divided into separate Hahn and Meitner Laboratories, and her pay was increased to 4,000 marks ({{Inflation|DE|4,000|1917|fmt=eq|cursign=€|r=-3}}).<ref name="wapost" />{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=65}} Hahn returned to Berlin on leave, and they discussed another loose end from their pre-war work: the search for the mother isotope of [[actinium]] (element 89). According to the [[radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy]], this had to be an isotope of the undiscovered element 91 on the [[periodic table]] that lay between [[thorium]] (element 90) and uranium (element 92). [[Kasimir Fajans]] and [[Oswald Helmuth Göhring]] discovered the missing element in 1913, and named it ''brevium'' after its short half-life. However, the isotope they had found was a beta emitter, and therefore could not be the mother isotope of actinium. This had to be another isotope of the same element.{{sfn|Sime|1986|pp=653–657}}

In 1914, Hahn and Meitner had developed a new technique for separating the [[tantalum]] group from [[pitchblende]], which they hoped would speed the isolation of the new isotope. When Meitner resumed this work in 1917, Hahn and most of the students, laboratory assistants and technicians had been called up to serve in the armed forces, so Meitner had to do everything herself. In February, she extracted 2 grams of [[silicon dioxide]] ({{chem|Si|O|2}}) from 21 grams of pitchblende. She set 1.5 grams aside and added a [[tantalum pentafluoride]] ({{chem|Ta|F|5}}) carrier to the other 0.5 grams, which she dissolved in [[hydrogen fluoride]] ({{chem|H|F}}). She then boiled it in concentrated [[sulfuric acid]] ({{chem|H|2|S|O|4}}), precipitated what was believed to be element 91, and verified that it was an alpha emitter. Hahn came home on leave in April, and together they devised a series of tests to eliminate other sources of alpha particles. The only known ones with similar chemical behaviour were [[lead-210]] (which decays to alpha emitter [[polonium-210]] via [[bismuth-210]]) and [[thorium-230]].{{sfn|Sime|1986|pp=653–657}}

Further investigation required more [[pitchblende]]. Meitner went to Vienna, where she met with Stefan Meyer. The export of uranium from Austria was forbidden due to wartime restrictions, but Meyer was able to offer her a kilogram of uranium residue, pitchblende from which the uranium had been removed, which was actually better for her purpose. The tests showed that the alpha activity was not due to these substances. All that now remained was to find evidence of actinium. For this yet more pitchblende was required, but this time Meyer was unable to assist, as the export was now prohibited. Meitner managed to obtain 100 grams of "double residue"—pitchblende without uranium or radium—from [[Friedrich Oskar Giesel]] and began tests with 43 grams of it, but its composition was different, and at first her tests did not work. With Giesel's help, she was able to produce a pure product that was strongly radioactive. By December 1917 she was able to isolate both the mother isotope and its actinium daughter product. She submitted their findings for publication in March 1918.{{sfn|Sime|1986|pp=653–657}}<ref>{{citation |first=Lise |last=Meitner |author-link=Lise Meitner |title=Die Muttersubstanz des Actiniums, Ein Neues Radioaktives Element von Langer Lebensdauer |trans-title=The Parent Substance of Actinium, a New Radioactive Element with a Long Lifetime |volume=19 |issue=11–12 |pages=169–173 |date=1 June 1918 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bbpc.19180241107 |access-date=3 June 2021 |journal=Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie und angewandte physikalische Chemie |doi=10.1002/bbpc.19180241107 |s2cid=94448132 |archive-date=16 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201016222127/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bbpc.19180241107 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Although Fajans and Göhring had been the first to discover the element, custom required that an element was represented by its longest-lived and most abundant isotope, and brevium did not seem appropriate. Fajans agreed to Meitner naming the element "protoactinium" (subsequently shortened to [[protactinium]]), and assigning it the chemical symbol Pa. In June 1918, Soddy and [[John Arnold Cranston|John Cranston]] announced that they had independently extracted a sample of the isotope, but unlike Meitner they were unable to describe its characteristics. They acknowledged Meitner's priority, and agreed to the name. The connection to uranium remained a mystery, as neither of the two known [[isotopes of uranium]] ([[uranium-234]] and [[uranium-238]]) decayed into protactinium. It remained unsolved until [[uranium-235]] was discovered by [[Arthur Jeffrey Dempster]] in 1935.{{sfn|Sime|1986|pp=653–657}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dempster |first=A. |author-link=Arthur Jeffrey Dempster |title=Isotopic Constitution of Uranium |journal=Nature |issn=0028-0836 |volume=136 |issue=180 |date=3 August 1935 |page=180 |doi=10.1038/136180a0 |bibcode=1935Natur.136..180D }}</ref>