Albert Ghiorso

Albert Ghiorso (1915–2010) was an American nuclear chemist who co-discovered multiple transuranium elements by producing and identifying them in particle-accelerator experiments.

Glenn T. Seaborg: An American chemist who helped discover several transuranium elements and developed the actinide concept. Seaborg led the Berkeley research group in which Ghiorso became a central experimental collaborator.
Particle accelerator: A device that uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles to high energies. Accelerators supplied the energetic ions used to make many of the nuclei Ghiorso investigated.
Americium: A radioactive chemical element with atomic number 95, first produced in 1944. Ghiorso helped identify americium in the Berkeley team’s early transuranium experiments.
Actinide concept: The placement of elements from actinium through lawrencium in a series analogous to the lanthanides. Ghiorso’s discoveries supplied new elements that filled out the actinide series.
Edwin McMillan: An American physicist who co-discovered neptunium and plutonium and shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. McMillan’s early transuranium work helped establish the Berkeley program Ghiorso later advanced.
Heavy-ion fusion: A nuclear reaction in which two relatively heavy nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus. This reaction produced several of the superheavy nuclei sought by Ghiorso’s teams.
Curium: A radioactive chemical element with atomic number 96, first identified in 1944. Ghiorso co-discovered curium through experiments involving helium-ion bombardment.
Transfermium Wars: A period of disputes over discovery credit and element names for elements heavier than fermium. Competing laboratories challenged credit for several discoveries associated with Ghiorso’s teams.
Marguerite Perey: A French chemist who discovered francium in 1939 while studying actinium decay. Perey’s work intersects with Ghiorso’s career through element discovery and the history of nuclear chemistry.
Nuclear reaction: A process in which an atomic nucleus changes through interaction with another nucleus or particle. Element synthesis is a nuclear reaction followed by evidence that the product existed.

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