Glenn T. Seaborg

lenn Theodore Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, Michigan, on April 19, 1912. At the age of 10 he moved with his family to California, in 1929 he graduated at David Starr Jordan High School in Los Angeles as valedictorian of his class.

He entered the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1929, and received the degree of Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937. From 1937 to 1939 he was the personal laboratory assistant of the late G. N. Lewis, with whom he published a number of scientific papers. In 1939, Dr. Seaborg was appointed an instructor in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1941, and to Professor of Chemistry in 1945. Email this page

Glenn T. Seaborg

Biographical

Glenn Theodore Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, Michigan, on April 19, 1912. At the age of 10 he moved with his family to California, in 1929 he graduated at David Starr Jordan High School in Los Angeles as valedictorian of his class.

He entered the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1929, and received the degree of Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937. From 1937 to 1939 he was the personal laboratory assistant of the late G. N. Lewis, with whom he published a number of scientific papers. In 1939, Dr. Seaborg was appointed an instructor in chemistry at the University of California, 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 the same year, he was appointed by President Truman to be a member of the AEC’s first General Advisory Committee, a post he held until 1950. In 1958, he was appointed Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. In that capacity he served until his appointment by President Kennedy to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961, when he was designated Chairman of the Commission. His term of office expires in 1968. From 1959 to 1961, he was also a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. 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. He was co-discoverer of plutonium and all further transuranium elements through element 102. In addition to the discovery of transuranium elements, Dr. Seaborg and his colleagues are responsible for the identification of more than 100 isotopes of elements throughout the Periodic Table. He is also author of the actinide concept of heavy element electronic structure. In this connection, Dr. Seaborg demonstrated that the heavy elements form a “transition” series of actinide elements in a manner analogous to the rare-earth series of lanthanide elements. The concept demonstrated how the heavy elements fit into the Periodic Table and thus demonstrated their relationships to the other elements. The body of information assembled in Dr. Seaborg’s laboratory has made it possible to predict the radioactive characteristics of many isotopes of elements still to be found. Under Dr. Seaborg’s leadership, also, whole new bodies of methodology and instrumentation have been developed and have become a cornerstone of modern nuclear chemistry. Dr. Seaborg is the author of approximately 200 scientific papers, including a number of comprehensive reviews and compilations in scientific publications. He is also author and co-author of several books on chemistry and the elements.