The Austrian-British physicist Otto Robert Frisch (1904-1979) was recognized for his significant role in the discovery of nuclear fission.

Otto Robert Frisch was born on October 1, 1904, in Vienna, Austria, the son of Justinian and Auguste (Meitner) Frisch. Though his father had a doctorate in law, his mother was an accomplished musician, and the family had intellectual connections, his father was forced by financial circumstances to pursue a career as a printer. Young Frisch thus grew up in a hardworking bourgeois Jewish family of extensive education and high expectations. Educated in a Viennese gymnasium, he learned Latin, Greek, and some arithmetic, but most of his mathematical training was private and personal.

At the age of ten his father introduced him to Cartesian coordinates, and within a couple of days he had worked out for himself the equation of the circle. At the age of 12 his father again tutored him...