Danish physicists Otto Kofoed-Hansen and Karl-Ove Nielsen, working at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, are first to demonstrate how to produce radioisotopes with an on-line technique. In a paper entitled Short-lived Krypton isotopes and their daughter substances Kofoed-Hansen and Nielsen demonstrate the feasibility of on-line production of short-lived radioactive isotopes.

They used fast neutrons, produced in the Copenhagen cyclotron in an internal Be target, to bombard a uranium oxide target. The produced fission products arre swept directly into the ion source of an isotope separator. This direct coupling of the accelerator, target and separator gives access to isotopes with shorter half-lives than any earlier indirect production method.