"Ida Tacke Noddack was a chemist who refused to see limits where others did. In 1934, she and her husband Otto Noddack, along with Walter Berg, discovered rhenium, one of the last naturally occurring elements to be found. But her boldest idea came that same year when Enrico Fermi announced he had created elements heavier than uranium by bombarding it with neutrons. Ida read his results carefully and suggested something no one else dared: perhaps the uranium nucleus wasn’t getting heavier at all, but instead was breaking into smaller fragments. She even published her hypothesis, stating clearly that a nucleus might “break into several large fragments,” a description of nuclear fission years before it was formally proven.
"Male physicists largely dismissed her. Some ignored her entirely, others dismissed her as careless or unqualified because she was a woman in a field dominated by men. Fermi himself disregarded her insight. It wasn’t until 1938, when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated fission in Berlin, that her idea was confirmed. By then, her name had already been pushed to the margins.
"Her life became a mix of discovery and frustration—recognized for her role in finding rhenium but overshadowed in the nuclear story she helped foresee. Ida Noddack’s early brilliance is a reminder of how often women’s voices in science were met with silence, even when they were the ones pointing to the future."
from She's So Cool:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1364261315706338&set=a.381000187365794
See Also
fission
Splitting Atoms and Molecules
splitting the atom - Keely