Glenn Theodore Seaborg

Glenn Theodore Seaborg , 1912-99, American chemist, b. Ishpeming, Mich., grad. Univ. of California at Los Angeles, 1934, Ph.D. Univ. of California at Berkeley, 1937. In 1939, he began teaching at Berkeley, where he became professor of chemistry (1945) and chancellor of the university (1958). During World War II, he was associated with the Univ. of Chicago, where he worked on the development of the atomic bomb. After the war, Seaborg was named head of the nuclear chemistry division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, later becoming director and then director emeritus of the laboratory. He served as chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971.

Seaborg codiscovered the elements plutonium (and its isotope Pu-239), americium , curium , berkelium , californium , einsteinium , fermium , mendelevium , and nobelium . For discoveries concerning the chemistry of transuranium elements, he shared with Edwin M. McMillan the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For his discoveries of the transuranium elements and for his "leadership in the development of nuclear chemistry and atomic energy," Seaborg received the 1959 Enrico Fermi award. In 1997, the element with the atomic number 106 was named seaborgium in his honor, marking the first time an element was named for a living person. His writings include Nuclear Properties of the Heavy Elements (1964), Nuclear Milestones (1972), The Elements Beyond Uranium (1990), A Chemist in the White House: From the Manhattan Project to the End of the Cold War (1998), and The Transuranium People: The Inside Story (1999).

Seaborg, Glenn T. (1912–1999) born in Michigan and educated at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Berkeley, he is best known for his work isolating and identifying elements heavier than uranium. He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin McMillan. Between 1940 and 1955, with his coworkers at UC–Berkeley, Seaborg added ten new elements (atomic numbers 94–102, 106); Element 106, seaborgium, was named for him. Element 94, plutonium, is the most well-known because it is used for nuclear purposes. Seaborg served as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1961–1971), and returned to UC–Berkeley in 1971.