Edwin McMillanBorn 18 Sep 1907; died 7 Sep 1991 at age 83.Edwin Mattison McMillan was an American nuclear physicist whosharedthe Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 (with Glenn T. Seaborg) for his discovery of element 93. Just as the planet Neptune is beyond Uranus, this new element was named neptunium, the first element beyond uranium, thus called a transuranium element. By irradiating uranium with rapid neutrons or with heavy-hydrogen nuclei (deuterons), other neptunium isotopes were soon produced in Berkeley. By 1940, McMillan with his colleagues working with Seaborg found that the radioactive decay of neptunium disintegrates yields element 94, called plutonium, after the planet Pluto beyond Neptune. During WW II he was engaged in national defence nuclear research.« |
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