Ida Noddack. Historical portrait of German chemist Ida Tacke Noddack (1896-1978) around 1930. Noddack was educated in Berlin, Germany, receiving her doctorate in 1921. In 1925 she co-discovered the element rhenium (atomic number 75) using X-ray spectroscopy, working together with Otto Berg and her husband Walter Noddack. Her suggestion, in 1934, that Fermi had caused nuclear fission of the uranium atom by nuclear bombardment was dismissed, though it was later proved to be correct and used to develop nuclear weapons and atomic power.