Abstract
THE hypothesis that two atomic nuclei indistinguishable in respect of atomic and mass number could nevertheless have different radioactive properties (the hypothesis of nuclear iso-merism) was put forward for the first time by Soddy1 in 1917. In 1921 uranium Z was discovered by Halin2; by studying the chemical and radioactive properties of this element, Hahn deduced that uranium Z and uranium X2 are isomeric nuclei. The problem of uranium Z has been taken up recently by Feather and Bretscher (Proc. Roy. Soc., 165, 542; 1938). It should be noted that, for many years, uranium Z and uranium X2 were the only known example of an isomeric pair.
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PONTECORVO, B. Recent Experimental Results in Nuclear Isomerism. Nature 144, 212–213 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144212a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144212a0
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