Photo credit: Atomic Energy Commission. (1946 - 01/19/1975) — Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Glenn T. Seaborg
1912–1999 · United States · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1951
Co-discovered plutonium and other transuranium elements and proposed the actinide concept for the periodic table.
Nobel Prize work
The 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Edwin McMillan, honored discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements. At Berkeley, Seaborg's team isolated and identified plutonium-239 in 1941 and went on to discover the elements from americium to mendelevium; his actinide hypothesis moved them to an f-series beneath the lanthanides, reshaping the periodic table.