Glenn Seaborg
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Background Information
Glenn 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.
1937- received Ph.D. in chemistry
1951- won Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Contribution to Science
Seaborg went to work as personal research assistant to the chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis. His work with Lewis dealt with the concepts of primary and secondary acids. During the period 1934 to 1942, Seaborg participated in the discovery of plutonium and its isotopes, which were essential to the construction of a nuclear bomb. During this period he was also deeply involved in the synthesis of radioactive isotopes from nonradioactive elements. In 1951 Seaborg and Edwin Mattison McMillan received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements.