Edwin McMillan, American Physicist
McMillan recreating the search for neptunium at the time of the announcement of the discovery, June 8, 1940. Edwin Mattison McMillan (September 18, 1907 - September 7, 1991) was an American physicist. He joined the group of Ernest Lawrence at the University of California, before moving to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. His experimental skills lead to the discovery of oxygen-15 with M. Stanley Livingston and beryllium-10 with Samuel Ruben. In 1940 he and Philip Abelson created neptunium, while conducting a fission experiment of uranium-239 with neutrons, using the cyclotron. During WWII, he was involved in research on radar at MIT and in 1942 was recruited to the Manhattan Project, involved in implosion research. In 1945 he developed ideas for the improvement of the cyclotron, leading to the development of the synchrotron. The synchrotron was used to create new elements at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory extending the periodic system of elements far beyond the 92 elements known before 1940. With Glenn T. Seaborg, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for "discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements." In 1954 he was appointed associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, being promoted to director in 1958, where he stayed until his retirement in 1973. He died in 1991 at the age of 83.
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