Nobel Prize-winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg died February 25, at the age of 86. Among his accomplishments were the discovery of plutonium and nine other elements, and a major revision of the periodic table.

Seaborg earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley in 1937. Early in his studies, he became interested the transuranium elements, elements beyond uranium. He and co-worker John J. Livingood discovered the radioactive isotopes iodine-131 and cobalt-60, now widely used in nuclear medicine for diagnosis and treatment. Seaborg later discovered the isotope technetium-99, which is used in medicine for heart scans. He and co-workers eventually discovered some 100 isotopes of the elements.

During World War II, Seaborg was one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb at the University of Chicago. President John F. Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961, and in 1963 he helped negotiate with Russia a nuclear test ban treaty preventing atmospheric bomb tests. As head of the AEC, a position he held until 1971, he was a strong advocate for peaceful and beneficial applications of nuclear chemistry. In 1976, he served as president of the American Chemistry Society (1). He was also interested in the reform of science education in the U.S

Seaborg’s most famous discovery was the element plutonium, and later the isotope plutonium-239. The isotope, which was shown to be a fissionable substance much like uranium-235, is now used as a fuel in nuclear reactors. After World War II, he was involved in the discovery of nine other transuranium elements, numbers 94 through 102 (2).

Many of the transuranium elements were synthesized by means of nuclear reactions called transmutation reactions. In a transmutation reaction, particle accelerators are used to accelerate particles to a high energy. The accelerated particles bombard target nuclei, changing their atomic structure. For example, neptunium (Np) was first synthesized by bombarding the nucleus of uranium-238 with a deuteron (H).

In 1945, Seaborg proposed the first major reorganization of the periodic table since Mendeleev’s organization of the elements in 1869. (3) He suggested that the elements in the actinide series (90 through 103) be placed just below the elements in the lanthanide series (58 to 71)?not under the transition metals (the middle ten columns of elements in the periodic table). This reorganization was based on the idea of placing elements of similar chemistry in the same columns or chemical families.

Glenn T. Seaborg was the only person to have an element named after him while still living: Seaborgium. Seaborg, along with Edwin McMillan, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1951 for research in the transuranium elements. In 1991, he received the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest award for science achievement. And in 1998, readers of Chemical and Engineering News voted Seaborg one of three top chemists in the last 75 years(4). Seaborg’s legacy includes not only basic research but, through his many leadership positions, improving the interface of science and society.

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