Radiochemical studies on nuclear fission at Trombay

Since the discovery of nuclear fission in the year 1939, both physical and radiochemical techniques have been adopted for the study of various aspects of the phenomenon. Due to the ability to separate individual elements from a complex reaction mixture with a high degree of sensitivity and selectivity, a chemist plays a significant role in the measurements of mass, charge, kinetic energy, angular momentum and angular distribution of fission products in various fissioning systems. At Trombay, a small group of radiochemists initiated the work on radiochemical studies of mass distribution in the early sixties. Since then, radiochemical investigations on various fission observables have been carried out at Trombay in n, p, alpha and heavy-ion-induced fissions. An attempt has been made to highlight the important findings of such studies in this paper, with an emphasis on medium energy and heavy-ion-induced fission.