McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
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Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Hahn, Otto, 1828-1904
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Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
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Description area
Dates of existence
1828-1904
History
Otto Hahn was born on July 13, 1828, in Ellwangen, Wurttemberg, Germany.
He was a German petrologist, geologist, lawyer, and author. He started his career as a lawyer. He eventually left the legal profession for the natural sciences. The University of Tübingen awarded him a doctorate for his participation in the Eozoön canadense controversy ("dawn animal"), an enigmatic Archaean fossil described in 1864 from Canadian limestone formations, believed to be some sort of gigantic microorganism that predated all other known fossil organisms. In 1880, after careful investigation of some collected rock samples, Hahn changed his mind and reclassified Eozoön as ancient algae, renaming the fossil Eophyllum ("dawn plant"). He published his studies and observations of sedimentary rocks in the book "Die Urzelle" (1879). He also studied meteorites and published his discoveries in the book "Die Meteorite (Chondrite) und Ihre Organismen" (1880).
In 1865, he married Rosine Rosa Friederike Schloz (1842–1923). He died on February 23, 1904, in Buffalo, New York.