Otto Hahn in an obituary: Hahn's death did not stop his public acclamation. Proposals were made at different times, first in 1971 by American chemists, that the newly synthesized element no. 105 should be named hahnium in Hahn's honor; in 1997 the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) named it dubnium, after the Russian research center in Dubna (see element naming controversy). Although element 108 was given the name hassium (after Hesse) by its officially recognized German discoverers in 1992, a 1994 IUPAC committee recommended that it be named hahnium (Hn), in spite of the long-standing convention to give the
Otto Hahn transferred from Vienna to Berlin. So began the thirty-year collaboration and lifelong close friendship between the two scientists. After the physicist Harriet Brooks had observed a "radioactive recoil" in 1904, but interpreted it wrongly, Otto Hahn succeeded, in late 1908 and early 1909, in demonstrating the radioactive recoil incident to alpha particle emission and interpreting it correctly. The physicist Walther Gerlach described this as "a profoundly significant discovery in physics with far-reaching consequences". Rutherford in Manchester wrote in a letter to his mother: "He is doing the best work in Germany at present." In 1910, Hahn was appointed professor by