Glenn T. Seaborg, American Nuclear Chemist

Seaborg's plutonium laboratory in Building 18 (Gilman Hall), August 29, 1962. Glenn Theodore Seaborg (April 19, 1912 - February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of 10 transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements: plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and element 106, which, while he was still living, was named seaborgium in his honor. He discovered more than 100 atomic isotopes and is credited with important contributions to the chemistry of plutonium. As part art of the Manhattan Project, he developed the extraction process used to isolate the plutonium fuel for the second atomic bomb. He advised ten US Presidents - from Truman to Clinton - on nuclear policy and was Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission from 1961-71, where he pushed for commercial nuclear energy and the peaceful applications of nuclear science. In 1998 he suffered a stroke, which led to his death six months later at the age of 86

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