nuclear fissionn.

1889 Jrnl. Royal Microsc. Soc. 728 (heading) Phenomena of indirect nuclear fission in inverting epithelia.

1923 Proc. Royal Soc. B. 95 350 Lungwitz says nothing of the sarcoplasts, but only indicates that the mitotic process of nuclear fission connected with the splitting up of the fibres gradually ceases.

1960 L. Picken Organization of Cells vii. 295 The formation of a secondary [myotube] is prepared by nuclear fission, leading to the formation of a second linear series of nuclei.

1939 L. Meitner & O. R. Frisch in Nature 11 Feb. 240/1 ‘Fission’ of the nucleus.]

1939 Physical Rev. 55 418/2 As pointed out by Meitner and Frisch, the recent discovery..of the appearance of a radioactive barium isotope as the product of such transmutations offers evidence of a new type of nuclear reaction in which the nucleus divides into two nuclei of smaller charges and masses with release of an energy of more than a hundred million electron volts. The direct proof of the occurrence of this so-called nuclear fission was given by Frisch.

1945 H. D. Smyth Gen. Acct. Devel. Atomic Energy Mil. Purposes i. 1 Such a conversion is observed in the phenomenon of nuclear fission of uranium.

1958 J. Betjeman Coll. Poems 230 Where Hodge sits down beside his wife And talks of Marx and nuclear fission With all a rustic's intuition.

1971 Sci. Amer. June 24/3 Nuclear-fusion fuels such as deuterium and tritium liberate more energy per nucleon (neutron or proton) than nuclear-fission fuels.

1990 E. Harth Dawn of Milennium (1991) ix. 150 The by-products of nuclear fission, such as the spent uranium fuel rods, are a mix of elements of widely differing half-lives.