Honours and Awards
During World War I, Hahn was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class, both in 1915, and a knight of the House Order of Hohenzollern (1917) and the Albert Order of Saxony (1917).
Otto Hahn received many governmental honours and academic awards from all over the world for his scientific work. He was elected member or honorary member of 45 Academies and scientific societies (among them the University of Cambridge, the Physical Society, the University College and the Royal Society in London (1957) and the Academies in Allahabad (India), Bangalore (India), Berlin, Boston (USA), Bucharest, Copenhagen, Göttingen, Halle, Helsinki, Lisbon, Madrid, Munich, Rome, Stockholm, Vatican, Vienna) and received 37 of the highest national and international orders and medals, among them the Gold Medals Emil Fischer, Cannizzaro, Copernicus, Max Planck, Henri Becquerel, Paracelsus and Hugo Grotius, the Faraday Lectureship Prize with Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry in London and the Adolf Harnack Medal in Gold from the Max Planck Society. In 1956 he received the Gold Cross of Greek Order of the Redeemer, in 1957 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire and in 1959 President Charles de Gaulle of France appointed him an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur. Hahn was made a knight of the Peace Class of the Order Pour le Mérite in 1952, and received the Grand Merit Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1954), which was subsequently upgraded in 1959 to Grand Cross 1st class. In 1961 Pope John XXIII awarded him the Gold Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.
In 1957 Hahn was elected an honorary citizen of the city of Magdeburg, DDR (German Democratic Republic), and in 1958 an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (today Russian Academy of Sciences) in Moscow, but he declined both honours.
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson of the USA, and the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Washington awarded Hahn (together with Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann) the Enrico Fermi Prize. This was the only time the Fermi Prize has been awarded to non-Americans.
Hahn was made an honorary citizen of the cities of Frankfurt am Main and Göttingen, and of the land and the city of Berlin. The day after his death, the Max Planck Society published the following obituary notice in all the major newspapers:
"On 28 July, in his 90th year, our Honorary President Otto Hahn passed away. His name will be recorded in the history of humanity as the founder of the atomic age. In him Germany and the world have lost a scholar who was distinguished in equal measure by his integrity and personal humility. The Max Planck Society mourns its founder, who continued the tasks and traditions of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society after the war, and mourns also a good and much loved human being, who will live in the memories of all who had the chance to meet him. His work will continue. We remember him with deep gratitude and admiration."
Famous quotes containing the word honours:
“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)