October 1 Science History

1953 - Edwin Joseph Cohn died.

Cohn was an American biochemist who is known for his work using the process of blood fractionation to separate whole blood into its components. He worked out the technique to isolate serum albumin fraction blood plasma. Transfusions of purified serum albumin are used to treat shock in emergency situations and saved thousands of lives during World War II.

1904 - Otto Robert Frisch was born.

Frisch was an Austrian physicist who first described the process where uranium atom nuclei split into smaller pieces when bombarded with neutrons and named the process 'fission'. He took the name from the biological process where cells split into two parts. He was also the first, with Rudolph Peirerls, to discover a possible violent chain reaction of Uranium-235 would take a much smaller mass than the common Uranium-238. This made the atomic bomb a practical possibility.