McMillan. Edwin

MCMILLAN, EDWIN M. (1907-1991). An American physicist who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1951 along with Glenn T. Seaborg lor their discoveries In the chemistry of the transuranium elements. His work included research in nuclear physics and particle accelerator development as well as microwave radar and sonar. He and his colleagues discovered neptunium and plutonium. He was the recipient of the Atoms for Peace prize in 1963. His Ph D. in Physics was awarded from Princeton University. 

McMillan, Edwin Mattison (1907-1991) American Physicist Edwin Mattison McMillan was born on September 18, 1907, at Redondo Beach, California, the son of Dr. Edwin Harbaugh McMillan, a physician, and Anne Marie McMillan (nee Mattison). He spent his early years in Pasadena, California, obtaining his education. 

McMillan, Edwin M. (1907-1991). An American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1951 along with Seaborg. His work... 

McMillan, Edwin. 1939. Radioactive recoils from uranium activated by neutrons. Phys. Rev. 55 510... 

McMillan, Edwin Mattison (1907-91) American physicist who, with Philip Abelson, produced the first human-made element, neptunium (atomic number 93). The two men won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1951. 

One of the major advances of science in the first half of this century was the synthesis of ten elements beyond uranium. Glenn T. Seaborg participated in the discovery oj most of these, a sufficient tribute to his outstanding ability as a scientist. For the first such discoveries, those of neptunium and plutonium, he shared with Professor Edwin M. McMillan the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1951. 

M Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907- M 1991 Nobel Prize for chemistry 1951), together with Arthur C. Wahl and Joseph W. Kennedy. Bombardment of 238U with cyclotron-accelerated deuterons gave rise to the isotope 238Pu after some intermediates. 

Edwin M. McMillan (1951, chemistry discovery of the transuranium elements)... 

Neptunium (Np, [Rn]5/46 /l7.v2), name and symbol after the planet Neptune. Discovered (1940, Berkeley) by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson. Silvery metal. 

Neptunium - the atomic niunber is 93 and the chemical symbol is Np. The name derives from the planet Neptune (the Roman god of the sea), since it is the next outer-most planet beyond the planet uranus in the solar system and this element is the next one beyond uranium in the periodic table.lt was first synthesized by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson in 1940 via the nuclear reaction n, y) U P = p. The longest half-life associated with this mistable... 

Plutonium - the atomic number is. 94 and the chemical symbol is Pu. The name derives from the planet Pluto, (the Roman god of the underworld). Pluto was selected because it is the next planet in the solar system beyond the planet Neptime and the element plutonium is the next element in the period table beyond neptunium. Plutonium was first synthesized in 1940 by American chemists Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin M. McMillan, Joseph W. Kennedy and Arthur C. Wahl in the nuclear reaction U( H, 2n) Np = P => Pu. The longest half-life associated with this unstable element is 80 million year Pu. 

Neptunium Np 1940 (Berkeley, California) Edwin McMillan and Philip Abelson (both American) 316... 

Among the fission products of uranium, one unidentified substance remained. O. Hahn, Lise Meitner, and F. Strassmann (47) had found a substance with a half-life of 23 minutes which they considered an isotope U285. In 1940 Edwin McMillan at the University of California in Berkeley, while investigating the properties of this isotope, discovered another substance associated with it which had a half-life of 2.3 days. He at once suspected that this might be the element with atomic number 93. A chemical study of the substance was made by E. Segre (48). This showed that the substance did not have properties similar to those of rhenium, as was expected of 93. Rather, the substance resembled the rare earths. In spite of this, McMillan did not lose interest in this material. 

Edwin M. McMillan was born on September 18, 1907, in Redondo Beach, California. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and took his doctorate in physics at Princeton University in 1932. He then went to Berkeley as a National Research Fellow and has remained on the faculty there ever since, except for a period of war research from 1940 to 1945. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Seaborg in 1951 (49, 50). 

G. T. Seaborg and E. M. McMillan. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry for 1951 was awarded jointly to Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin M. McMillan, both of the University of California, for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements." Dr. Seaborg is chairman of the Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of California. Dr. McMillan worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in connection with radar development, collaborated with J. Robert Oppenheimer in organizing the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, and did the initial work that led to the discovery of elements heavier than uranium. 

Edwin McMillan and Philip Abelson obtain the first transuranium element, neptunium (element 93), by bombardment of uranium with neutrons. 

G. T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, J. W. Kennedy, and A. C. Wahl prepare plutonium (element 94) in the cyclotron. 

The first genuine transuranic element was discovered at Berkeley, where Edwin McMillan used Lawrence s cyclotron in 1939 to bombard uranium with slow neutrons. He saw beta decay from what he predicted was element 93, and set about trying to isolate it. McMillan saw that the element sits beneath the transition metal rhenium in the Periodic Table, and so he assumed it should share some of rhenium s chemical properties. But when he and Fermi s one-time collaborator Emilio Segre performed a chemical analysis, they found that eka-rhenium (in Mendeleyev s terminology) behaved instead like a lanthanide, the series of fourteen elements that loops out of the table after lanthanum (see page 152). Disappointed, they figured that all they had found was one of these known elements. 

In 1951 along with Edwin McMillan he received the Nobel prize in chemistry for the creation of the first transuranium elements. He created plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, and californium at Berkeley. 

Prior to 1939, elements of atomic number greater than 92 were unknown, and there was considerable doubt as to whether such elements could exist. In 1939, however, Edwin McMillan and Philip Abel-son reported the production of the first of the transuranium elements. By bombarding uranium with neutrons, they produced an element of atomic number 93, which was later named neptunium (Np). 

This continued to block the discovery of element 93, even though everyone now knew just where to look for it. In the spring of 1939 Edwin McMillan and Emilio Segre irradiated uranium in the Berkeley cyclotron to form the 23-minute uranium of process 3. They detected a new 2-day beta activity, but because the activity had... 

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