1999: Glenn Theodore Seeborg, American chemist (born 1912)
Glenn Theodore Seaborg (19 April 1912 – 25 February 1999) was an American nuclear chemist.
For his outstanding contributions to transuranic elements, He was awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Macmillan (the main discoverer of neptunium).
Later, at an international conference held in August 1997, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decided to name it after Albert Gioso by A. Sibog. Ghiorso) and his discovery of element 106 (Sg) break the convention that chemical elements cannot be named after living people.
Life
Born in Ispermin, Michigan, Seeborg moved with his family to California in 1922.
He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1934.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937. Becoming Lawrence's aide he had long been teaching and researching at Berkeley during World War II, where he worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago and played a role in the development of the atomic bomb.
After World War II, Seeburger returned to Berkeley in 1946. Professor of Chemistry and Supervisor of Nuclear Chemistry at lawrence Radiology Laboratory.
In 1954, he became the deputy director of the laboratory.
He was President of Berkeley from 1958 to 1961.
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy appointed him Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He was the first scientist to hold such a position.
He left the committee in 1971 and returned to Berkeley as a professor, and from 1972 to 1975 he was concurrently the director of the Nuclear Chemistry Research Laboratory.
contribute
In 1940 he and Macmillan et al. began to prepare transuranic elements. Macmillan bombards the uranium target with a cyclotron and separates it to obtain a neptunium.
From 1940 to 1958, they discovered a total of 9 new elements, including atomic numbers 94 to 102. One of the most famous elements is plutonium (element 94), which was used as fuel for nuclear explosions and nuclear reactors, and was later used by E. Lee. The University of Chicago laboratory, directed by Fermi, was industrialized for the first time. This is a crucial step in the successful development of nuclear weapons.
Other new elements he discovered were americium (95), curium (96), germanium (97), osmium (98), cadmium (99), cadmium (100), vanadium (101), and curium (102).
In 1944 , Schieborg proposed the actinide theory. The chemical properties and positions of these heavy elements in the periodic table are predicted. This principle states that actinides and the 14 consecutive elements heavier than it belong to the same series in the periodic table, now called actinides.
Seeburg also found fission-prone isotopes: plutonium-239 and uranium-233, plutonium-238 with important application value, iron-59, iodine-131, cobalt-57 and cobalt-60.
In 1980 he completed experiments at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, successfully converting thousands of bismuth atoms into gold atoms. This experiment is based on the principle of nuclear energy, which can remove neutrons and protons from the bismuth element. However, this method of goldmaking is too expensive to be used for commercial mass production. However, the results of his experiments are considered to be similar to the power of the "Sage Stone" in ancient mythology.
In the 1990s, he devoted himself to the exploration of superheavy nuclei and the study of heavy ion nuclear reactions of actinides.
Seeborg died on February 25, 1999, at his residence in California, U.S.A., at the age of 86.
honor
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Seeborg received many honors.
He was awarded the Fermi Prize in 1959. Other awards include the Erikson Gold Medal of the Swedish Society of Engineers, the Order of Vaasa, and the French Order of Merit.
He was awarded the Swedish American title in 1962.
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