Seaborg, Glenn Theodore

Seaborg, Glenn Theodore (sē`bôrg), 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).

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Seaborg, Glenn Theodore 

Born Apr. 19, 1912, in Ishpeming, Mich. American physicist.

Seaborg graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1934. After receiving the Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1937, he joined the university’s research staff. He was appointed a professor there in 1945 and was chancellor from 1958 until 1961. Between 1942 and 1946, Seaborg worked on the industrial production of plutonium at the metallurgical laboratory of the University of Chicago. From 1954 to 1961 he was associate director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley; he returned to this position in 1971. Between 1961 and 1971 he was chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission.

Together with E. McMillan, Seaborg synthesized plutonium in 1940–41. With other scientists, he discovered americium (1944–45), curium (1944), berkelium (1949), californium (1950), einsteinium (1952), fermium (1953), and mendelevium (1955). In subsequent years, he worked on the synthesis of even heavier elements.

Seaborg received a Nobel Prize in 1951 with McMillan. He became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in l971.

WORKS

The International Atom. [Washington, D.C., 1969.]
In Russian translation:
Khimiia aktinidnykh elementov. Moscow, 1960. (With J. Katz.)
Transuranovye elementy. Moscow, 1959. (With E. K. Hyde.)
Elementy Vselennoi. Moscow, 1962. (With E. G. Valens.)
Chelovek i atom. Moscow, 1973.(With W. Corliss.)