April 19, 1912: Glenn Seaborg is born
Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912-1999)
Scientific field: Chemistry
Known for: Transuranium elements
Glenn Theodore Seaborg was an American nuclear chemist best known for his work on isolating and identifying elements heavier than uranium. He was awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry (with Edwin Mattison McMillan). Element 106, seaborgium, was named in his honour.
With his coworkers, Seaborg added (1940–55) 10 new elements that encompass atomic numbers 94–102 and 106, of which plutonium (94) is the best known because of its use as a nuclear explosive and for nuclear power. Shortly after winning the Nobel Prize, Seaborg wrote a number of entries for the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, among them the article on plutonium for the 1953 printing. (See the Britannica Classic: plutonium.) During World War II, which he spent as a section chief at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, the first industrial production of plutonium was undertaken in newly devised uranium reactors, and Seaborg had the primary responsibility for isolating plutonium from the reaction products.
The other new elements added by Seaborg and his coworkers were americium (95), curium (96), berkelium (97), californium (98), einsteinium (99), fermium (100), mendelevium (101), nobelium (102), and unnilhexium (106). The prediction of the chemical properties and placement of these and many heavier elements in the periodic table was greatly helped by an important organizing principle enunciated by Seaborg in 1944 and known as the actinide concept. According to this concept, the 14 elements heavier than actinium belong in a separate group in the periodic table.
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