Joseph William Kennedy: American Chemist

Born on May 30, 1916, in Nacogdoches, Texas, Joseph William Kennedy achieved his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1935. He then pursued advanced studies at the University of Kansas, culminating in a Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1937. His academic journey led him to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his PhD in chemistry in 1939.

In the year 1940, Kennedy collaborated with Glenn Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, and Arthur Wahl to make a momentous breakthrough, identifying the element plutonium. Through Kennedy's innovative approach to designing and constructing crucial apparatus, they successfully verified the presence of plutonium. Additionally, this group revealed that plutonium possessed fissile properties, a pivotal revelation with substantial implications for the Manhattan Project's investigations.

After the conclusion of World War II, Kennedy embarked on an academic career at Washington University in St. Louis. His pivotal role involved transforming the university's primary emphasis from undergraduate instruction to a prestigious establishment renowned for its robust research and graduate programs. Eventually, he assumed leadership as the head of the Chemistry Department.

Tragically, Joseph William Kennedy's life was prematurely curtailed by cancer on May 5, 1957, when he was just 40 years old.
Joseph William Kennedy: American Chemist

Arthur Charles Wahl– Henry V. Farr Professor of Radiochemistry

Arthur Charles Wahl (1917-2006) was an American chemist. Wahl was born Sept. 8, 1917 in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1939 he received his Bachelor's Degree in chemistry from Iowa State University.

He went to Berkeley for graduate work where he chose to work with Joseph W. Kennedy and Glenn T. Seaborg. In 1941, Arthur Wahl, Glenn Seaborg, Joseph Kennedy, and Emilio Segrè, building on the earlier work, isolated the daughter of neptunium-239, an element, also of mass 239, that had been predicted theoretically by Louis Turner.

Wahl received his PhD degree in 1942 for the plutonium identification. The papers, related to this work were withheld from publication until after the conclusion of the war.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1942, Wahl was recruited by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Glenn Seaborg to come to Los Alamos in 1943. He was a worker on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos until 1946, when he joined Washington University in St. Louis.

Beginning in 1952, he was the Henry V. Farr Professor of Radiochemistry; he received the American Chemical Society Award in Nuclear Chemistry in 1966 and retired in 1983. Arthur died in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Mar 6th 2006
Arthur Charles Wahl– Henry V. Farr Professor of Radiochemistry

Glenn Theodore Seaborg - an American nuclear chemist

Glen Seaborg was born on 19 April 1912 in the small mining town of Ishpeming, MI, USA. When he was 10, his family moved to a suburb of Los Angeles. Seaborg graduated from high school at the top of his class, then studied for a Chemistry degree at UCLA, where he graduated in 1933, aged 21.

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