Fathi Habashi

Laval University, Canada

Title: Historical Chemistry: Trans-uranium or Uranium Fission?

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Biography

Ida Noddack's scientific career centers around her intensive study of the Periodic Table.  This resulted in two major discoveries.  The first was based on her realization that the missing element dvi-manganese should have properties similar to its neighbours in the horizontal period and not to members of the vertical group of which manganese was the only member known.  In this way she was able to look for and discover the metal rhenium.  The second discovery was a daring hypothesis that the so-called element 93, a transuranium element that was supposedly formed by bombarding uranium (element 92) by neutrons, and was put under rhenium in the manganese group (in the old Periodic Table) was not correct.  Instead, she suggested that the uranium atom might have split into two fragments -- a phenomenon that later became known as fission.

Abstract

Fathi Habashi, Professor Emeritus of Extractive Metallurgy at Laval University in Quebec City. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cairo (1949), a Dr. techn. degree in Inorganic Chemical Technology from the University of Technology in Vienna (1959), and Dr. Sc. honorus causa from the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute in Russia (1993) and from the National Technical University in Lima, Peru (2010). He held the Canadian Government Scholarship at the Mines Branch in Ottawa (1960–1962), taught at Montana College of Mineral Science & Technology (1964–1967), then worked at the Extractive Metallurgical Research Department of Anaconda Company in Tucson, Arizona before joining Laval in 1970. His research was mainly directed towards organizing the unit operations in extractive metallurgy and putting them into a historical perspective.He is an Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Oruro in Bolivia, Honorary Citizen of the city of Oruro, Governor at the Fondation de l’Université Laval, and Member of Le Cercle des Ambassadeurs in Québec City. He is a member of a number of Editorial Boards of extractive metallurgy journals and Chairman of the Historical Metallurgical Committee of the Metallurgical Society of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum. Habashi was guest professor at a number of foreign universities, authored a number of textbooks on extractive metallurgy and its history, and edited Handbook of Extractive Metallurgy in 4 volumes in 1997. Some of his textbooks were translated in many languages. In 1998 he was named a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum and in 1999 he received its silver medal.