Seaborg, Glenn Theodore

▪ 2000

      American nuclear scientist (b. April 19, 1912, Ishpeming, Mich.—d. Feb. 25, 1999, Lafayette, Calif.), headed the Atomic Energy Commission for a decade (1961–71) and was a corecipient (with Edwin McMillan) of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951. He was best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements (i.e., elements heavier than uranium and therefore higher on the periodic table), the most important of which was plutonium. Seaborg received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and, after finishing his Ph.D. in 1937 at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the faculty of that institution. With his colleagues at Berkeley, Seaborg synthesized a total of 10 new transuranium elements. During World War II he joined the team working on the Manhattan Project—the now-legendary effort to build an atomic bomb—at the University of Chicago. Seaborg returned to California after the war, teaching at Berkeley and serving as chancellor from 1958 to 1961. He was also head of the nuclear chemistry division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and, for a time, director of the laboratory.When element 106 was named seaborgium after him in 1997, Seaborg became the first living scientist to be so honoured. His many other awards and honours included the Enrico Fermi Award and the Priestley Medal of the American Chemical Society.

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