He entered the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1929, and earned his Ph.D. at Berkeley in chemistry in 1937. He stayed on at Berkeley as the personal laboratory assistant of Gilbert N. Lewis from 1937 to 1939 with whom he published a number of scientific papers.
In 1939, Dr. Seaborg was appointed an instructor in chemistry at Berkeley, where he was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1941, and to Professor of Chemistry in 1945.
In 1946, he also took responsibility for direction of nuclear chemical research at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, operated for the Atomic Energy Commission by the University of California; from 1954 to 1961, he was Associate Director of LRL.
In 1938, Seaborg and Emilio Segrè discovered technetium-99m, the most-used medical radioisotope ever. It is used it tens of millions of scans every year.
Between December 1940 and February 1941, Seaborg, together with Edwin McMillan, Emilio Segrè, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl, by deuteron bombardment of uranium in the 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. This experimental achievement proved to be a major contribution in physicists' understanding of atomic fission.
Dr. Seaborg was given a leave of absence from the University of California from 1942-1946, during which period he headed the plutonium work of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. His team was responsible for devising the chemical process for the separation, concentration and isolation of plutonium. This process was used at the pilot plant, the Clinton Engineer Works, at the Oakridge site and the production Plant at Hanford.
Seaborg was the principal or co-discoverer of 10 elements. Element 106 is named seaborgium in his honor. He received patents for the element americium and curium. After the war Seaborg returned to Berkeley as an academic while also directing the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, part of the US Atomic Energy Commission.
Dr. Seaborg is an Honorary Fellow of the Chemical Society of London and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists, the New York Academy of Sciences, the California Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Glenn T. Seaborg died on February 25, 1999 in Lafayette, CA, USA.
Glenn Theodore Seaborg - an American nuclear chemist
