1 / 26

Lester R. Morss

Lester R. Morss. Glenn T. Seaborg as an Exemplary Chemical Educator. American Chemical Society 244 th National Meeting Philadelphia August 19, 2012. 1. 1. Periodic Table, 1898. From W. Ostwald, Grundriss der Allgemeine Chemie, 1898. History of Actinide Elements.

von
Download Presentation

Lester R. Morss

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Lester R. Morss Glenn T. Seaborg as an Exemplary Chemical Educator American Chemical Society 244th National Meeting Philadelphia August 19, 2012 1 1

  2. Periodic Table, 1898 From W. Ostwald, Grundriss der Allgemeine Chemie, 1898

  3. History of Actinide Elements • Uranium: discovered by Klaproth, 1789 • Thorium: discovered by Berzelius, 1829 • Actinium: what is now known to be 227Ac was discovered by Debierne (1900) or Giesel (1902) • Protactinium: what is now known to be 234mPa was discovered by Fajans and Göring as “brevium”, 1913 • Enrico Fermi received Nobel Prize in 1938 for “transuranium elements” that were soon found to be fission products • Neptunium: 239Np discovered by McMillan and Abelson, 1940 • Plutonium: 238Pu discovered by Seaborg et al., 1940-1941 • Americium: 241Am discovered by Seaborg et al., 1944-1945 • Curium: 242Cm discovered by Seaborg et al., 1944 • Actinide hypothesis (filling the 5f subshell): Seaborg, 1944; announced 1945

  4. GTS in Berkeley, 1941

  5. GTS with Periodic Table and Ion Exchange Column, May 1950

  6. Production of transplutonium elements by slow-neutron irradiation Nuclear reaction sequence for production of transplutonium elements by intense slow-neutron irradiation. The principal path is shown by heavy arrows (horizontal, neutron capture; vertical, beta decay). The sequence above 258Fm is a prediction.

  7. Periodic Table, 1951 http://imglib.lbl.gov/ImgLib/COLLECTIONS/BERKELEY-LAB/SEABORG-ARCHIVE/images/96703289.lowres.jpeg

  8. Academic Career of Glenn T. Seaborg • AB Chemistry, UCLA 1934 • PhD UC Berkeley with Gibson 1937 • Thesis: The Interaction of Fast Neutrons with Lead • Research assistant for G. N. Lewis, 1937-39 • Instructor, 1939-40 • Assistant professor, 1940- • Section leader, Manhattan Project 1942-6 • Professor, 1946-1999 • Chancellor

  9. What defines a chemical educator? • Classroom teaching • Education of graduate students • Curricular innovations • Service on advisory panels that improve education • Mentoring junior colleagues • Leadership in professional organizations • Textbooks and monographs

  10. Seaborg as chemical educator • Chaired a panel of President Eisenhower's Science Advisory Committee to study the integration of basic research with graduate science education, 1958 • The “Seaborg Report” provided blueprint for American basic research for the next 25 years • Chair, Chemical Education Material Study (CHEM Study), 1960 • Developed new teaching materials for high school chemistry • President, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1972 • President, American Chemical Society, 1976 • Director, Lawrence Hall of Science, 1982-1984 • Co-chair with Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins at a summit conference on pre-college science and math education, 1989. • Report issued on May 22, 1990 • Appointed by California Governor Pete Wilson as Chairman of the Science Committee of the California Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, 1998.

  11. Announcement of discovery of Am and Cm Glenn T. Seaborg and Quiz Kids Sheila Conlon and Bob Burke when Seaborg informally announces the discovery of element 95 (americium) and element 96 (curium) in Chicago on the radio show “Quiz Kids” on Nov 11, 1945. LBNL photo XBD9611-05600.TIF

  12. Anecdotal evidence • Katz, “Early Days in the ‘Met Lab’ ” paper in Transuranium Elements: A Half Century, 1990 • William Jolly, From Retorts to Lasers, 1987 • Patrick Coffey, Cathedrals of Science,2008 • Ken Moody • Lester Morss

  13. Lester Morss • AB Chemistry and Physics, Harvard, 1961 • PhD UC Berkeley with B B Cunningham, 1969 • Thesis: Crystallography and Thermochemistry of Chlorocomplex Compounds of Lanthanides and Actinides • Postdoctoral, J. W. Cobble, Purdue, 1969-71 • Assistant and associate professor, Rutgers University, 1971-80 • Chemist and senior chemist, Argonne, 1980-2002 • Program manager, DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, 2002-1010

  14. C&E News cover January 8, 1968

  15. Cunningham in Berkeley laboratory, 1956

  16. Morss, Cunningham, Seaborg, and Katz • Morss met Seaborg during AEC chair’s Berkeley visit ~1968 • Cunningham died March 28, 1971 • Seaborg writes to Morss, offering to be surrogate mentor • Seaborg invited Morss to author chapter in The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements, 2nd ed. • Submits chapter 1978 • Morss met Katz at Argonne 1980 • Became third editor of The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements, 2nd ed. • Mentored by Katz in editing many chapters • Frequent meetings with Katz and Seaborg at ACS meetings • 2nd edition of The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements published 1986 • Plans for 3rd edition of The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements through August 1998

  17. Katz publications with Seaborg • G. T. Seaborg, J. J. Katz, and W. M. Manning, (eds.) (1949) The Transuranium Elements: Research Papers, Natl. Nucl. En. Ser., Div. IV, 14B, McGraw‐Hill. • Glenn T. Seaborg and Joseph J. Katz (eds.), The Actinide Elements, McGraw-Hill, 1954. • Joseph J. Katz and Glenn T. Seaborg, The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements, Methuen, 1957. • Joseph J. Katz, Glenn T. Seaborg, and Lester R. Morss (eds.), The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Chapman & Hall, 1986. • 3rd and 4th editions: Morss, Fuger, Edelstein (eds.) The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements, 2006 (5 vols) and 2010 (6 vols)

  18. Dedication of The Chemistry of the Actinide Elements, 3rded.

  19. Seaborg, “Prospects for Further Extension of the Periodic Table,” J. Chem. Ed. 46, 626 (1969)

  20. Table of Isotopes: Island of Stability The Chemistry of the Actinide and TransactinideElememts (2006) Fig. 14.24. Plot of heavy element topology showing landing points for proposed reactions. Heavy element isotopes reported since 1978 up to mid‐2002 are indicated with symbols denoting half‐life ranges: 0.1 ms to 0.1 s (+); 0.1 s to 5 min (○); > 5 min ().

  21. Chart of nuclides above berkelium (Z = 97), July 2012 E M Ramirez et al. Science, July 2012: science.1225636. fig 1 Published by AAAS

  22. Glenn Seaborg with CSEE students at LBNL Bldg 50 CSEE: Center for Science and Engineering Education at LBNL

  23. Professor Burris Bell Cunningham

  24. Cunningham’s Salvioni balance

  25. First weighed sample of PuO2: 2.77 μg, Sept 10, 1942

  26. http://www.seaborg.ucla.edu/biography.html

More Related