Chancellor at Berkeley

Born in Ishepeming, Michigan, Glenn Seaborg received a degree in chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles. He then studied at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. and taught until World War II. During the war Seaborg worked at the University of Chicago on the Manhattan Project. He was a leader of the team that discovered the transuranic elements plutonium, americium, and curium. This work led to the development of a method of separating plutonium from uranium in quantities large enough to make an atomic bomb. After World War II Seaborg continued his research on the creation of the transuranium elements. In 1951 he shared the Nobel Prize for discoveries in the chemistry of these elements with Edwin McMillan. Seaborg is codiscoverer of the elements Berkelium, Californium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Mendelevium, and Nobelium. He has spent most of his postwar professional life at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. From 1961 to 1971 he also served as chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. 020