Glenn Seaborg

Glenn Seaborg

Glenn Theodore Seaborg (April 19, 1912 – Feb. 25, 1999) was an American chemist. He was born in Ishpening, Michigan. He won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Edwin M. McMillan.

In 1980, he changed several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique, using nuclear physics, was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atom. Seaborg's techique would have cost too much money to make of gold, but his work is the closest to the mythical Philosopher's Stone.

Seaborg worked at the Manhattan Project during World War II. He studied the chemical properties of plutonium as a part of the secret war research.

He served as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was said to be the author/co author of 500 scientific articles and multiple books. He was born in 1912 and died in 1999 from a stroke. He has a wife called Helen Griggs and his family consisted of his sister, Jeanette who was 2 years younger than him, and his parents, Henry Theodore and Selma Olivia Erikson Seaborg

Seaborg was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements: plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and element 106, which was named seaborgium in his honor while he was still living. He also developed more than 100 atomic isotopes. Early in his career, Seaborg was a pioneer in nuclear medicine and developed many isotopes of elements that helped to diagnose and treat diseases. For example, he studied iodine-131, which is used in the treatment of thyroid disease. He developed the actinide concept which placed the actinide series beneath the lanthanide series on the periodic table. Seaborg also proposed the placement of super-heavy elements in the transactinide and superactinide series.

Glenn Seaborg Media

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  Seaborg in 1950, with the ion exchanger elution column of actinide elements

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  Seaborg (second from left) during Operation Plumbbob

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  From left to right: Chairman Seaborg, President Kennedy, Secretary McNamara on March 23, 1962. By this point, McNamara and Seaborg had been discussing the AEC's studies on the ecological effects of nuclear war and "clean" weapon alternatives. (Courtesy: National Security Archive, Original: National Archives)

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  Seaborg (right) with marine biologist Dixy Lee Ray on September 17, 1968

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  Helen and Glenn Seaborg in Stockholm in 1951