Gottfried von Droste


Gottfried Freiherr von Droste, a.k.a. Gottfried Freiherr von Droste zu Vischering-Padberg, was a German physical chemist. He worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. He independently predicted that nuclear fission would release a large amount of energy. During World War II, he participated in the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranverein. In the latter years of the war, he worked at the Reich’s University of Strassburg. After the war, he worked at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Federal Physical and Technical Institute and also held a position at the Technical University of Braunschweig.
He was a Freiherr of the Westphalian noble family Droste zu Vischering.

Education

From 1926 to 1933, Droste studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, at which he received his doctorate in 1933. His thesis advisor was Lise Meitner, who was an adjunct professor at this University of Berlin and directed doctoral research in her own section at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, in Berlin-Dahlem.

Career

From 1933, von Droste was a member of the Sturmabteilung. From 1937, he was a member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
From 1933 to 1942, von Droste was a scientific assistant at the KWIC, where Otto Hahn was the director and until July 13, 1938 Lise Meitner headed a department. While at the KWIC, Droste contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranverein.
In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons; simultaneously, they communicated these results to Lise Meitner, who had in July of that year fled to the Netherlands and then went to Sweden. Meitner, and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, Discovery of fission

Internal reports

The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte, an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.