Edwin McMillan
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| Edwin Mattison McMillan | |
|---|---|
| Image:Replace this image male.svg | |
| Born | 18 September 1907 Redondo Beach, California, USA |
| Died | 07 September 1991 (aged 83) El Cerrito, Contra Costa County, California, USA |
| Nationality | Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States |
| Field | Chemistry |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley Berkeley Radiation Laboratory |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology Princeton University |
| Academic advisor | Edward Condon Ernest Lawrence Image:Nobel Prize.png |
| Known for | the first transuranium element |
| Notable prizes | Image:Nobel Prize.pngNobel Prize in Chemistry (1951) |
Edwin Mattison McMillan (September 18, 1907 – September 7, 1991) was the first scientist to produce a transuranium element.
He was born in Redondo Beach, California, but his family moved to Pasadena the following year. He attended some of the public lectures at the California Institute of Technology as high school student and began his studies there in 1924. He did a research project with Linus Pauling as undergraduate and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1928 and his Master of Science degree in 1929, both from the California Institute of Technology.
He then took his Doctor of Philosophy from Princeton University in 1932 for the thesis: "Deflection of a Beam of HCI Molecules in a Non-Homogeneous Electric Field" under the supervision of Edward Condon.
He joined the group of Ernest Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley upon receiving his doctorate, moving to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory when it was founded at Berkeley in 1934.
His experimental skills lead to the discovery of oxygen-15 with Stanley Livingston and beryllim-10 with Samuel Ruben
In 1940 he and Philip Abelson created neptunium, while conducting a fission experiment of uranium-239 with neutrons, using the cyclotron at Berkeley. The newly found isotope of neptunium was created by absorption of neutron into the uranium-239 and a subsequent beta decay. McMillan understood the underlying principle of the reaction and started to bombard the uranium-239 with deuterium to create the element 94. He moved to the radar research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Glenn T. Seaborg finished the work.
In World War II, he was involved in research on radar at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sonar near San Diego, and nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos Laboratory. After this unsteady time during the World War II he joint Berkeley Radiation Laboratory again and becoming head of the institute after the death of Ernest Lawrence in 1958.
In 1945 he developed ideas for the improvement of the cyclotron, leading to the development of the synchrotron. The synchrotron was used to create new elements at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory extending the periodic system of elements far beyond the 92 elements known before 1940.
With Glenn T. Seaborg, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for the creation of the first transuranium elements.
In 1946, he became a full professor at Berkeley, and in 1954 he was appointed associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, being promoted to director in 1958, where he stayed until his retirement in 1973.
He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1947, serving as its chairman from 1968 to 1971.
[edit] References
- Nobel Foundation (1951). The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1951. Les Prix Nobel. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
- National Museum of American History. Nobel Prize Medal in Chemistry for Edwin McMillan. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
- LBNL (Fall/Winter 1991). "In Memoriam: Edwin Mattison McMillan". Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Research Review. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
- Glenn T. Seaborg (1993). "Biographical Memoirs: Edwin Mattison McMillan (18 September 1907-7 September 1991)". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137 (2): 286-291.
[edit] External links
- McMillan's Nobel Foundation biography
- McMillan's Nobel Lecture The Transuranium Elements: Early History
Nobel Laureates in Chemistry |
|---|
Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg (1951) • Archer Martin / Richard Synge (1952) • Hermann Staudinger (1953) • Linus Pauling (1954) • Vincent du Vigneaud (1955) • Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov (1956) • Alexander Todd (1957) • Frederick Sanger (1958) • Jaroslav Heyrovský (1959) • Willard Libby (1960) • Melvin Calvin (1961) • Max Perutz / John Kendrew (1962) • Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta (1963) • Dorothy Hodgkin (1964) • Robert Woodward (1965) • Robert S. Mulliken (1966) • Manfred Eigen / Norrish / George Porter (1967) • Lars Onsager (1968) • Derek Barton / Odd Hassel (1969) • Luis Federico Leloir (1970) • Gerhard Herzberg (1971) • Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein (1972) • E.O.Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson (1973) • Paul Flory (1974) • John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog (1975) |
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Categories: Chemist stubs | 1907 births | 1991 deaths | American chemists | California Institute of Technology alumni | Manhattan Project people | National Medal of Science laureates | Nobel laureates in Chemistry | Princeton University alumni | Scottish-Americans | University of California, Berkeley faculty
