Joseph KennedyBorn 30 May 1916; died 5 May 1957 at age 40. Joseph William Kennedy was an American chemist and physicist, one of four co-discoverers of plutonium, (element 94) which was produced from uranium oxide bombarded with deuterons in a cyclotron at the Univ. of California at Berkeley. Subsequently, on 28 Mar 1941, Glenn Seaborg, Emilio Segrè and Joseph Kennedy demonstrated that plutonium, like U235, is fissionable with slow neutrons, thus neutrons of any speed, which implies it's a potential fission bomb material. He was a chemistry instructor while working on the research project led by Glenn Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley. After working with Seaborg, Kennedy was chosen by J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the Chemistry Division of the Manhattan Project.Image: plutonium hydroxide, 20 microgram in a capillary tube, Sep 1942. |
