A Retrospective View of My 70 Years in Chemistry - ACS Symposium

Chapter 18

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A Retrospective View of My 70 Years in Chemistry Darleane Christian Hoffman* Faculty Senior Scientist, Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor Emerita, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, U.S.A. *E-mail: [email protected].

In this article, some of the people and events that helped shape my long career in chemistry are recalled. The status of women has changed dramatically over these years as have chemistry and my specialties of radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry. When I entered Iowa State College in 1944 as an Applied Art major, freshman chemistry was a required subject. It was my first course in chemistry and was taught by a woman chemistry professor. She emphasized chemistry as a basic science with opportunities in both fundamental and applied research and told of Marie Curie’s discovery of radium as well as practical applications in everyday life. Because of her inspiring lectures, I soon decided to change my major to chemistry! Subsequent undergraduate research in nuclear chemistry exposed me to the thrill of discovering new isotopes. I earned my B.S. (1944), Ph.D. (1951) in Chemistry (nuclear) and married fellow graduate student Marvin Hoffman (1951). I quickly learned that “you can’t do it all by yourself”! I had outstanding help at home and a husband who understood that I must continue my career even after we had two children. The opportunity to travel, attend international conferences, pursue sabbaticals abroad, accept lectureships in many different countries ranging from North and South America, to China, Japan and Europe helped broaden my horizons and understand the potential ‘uniting power’ of science in the solution of world problems. © 2015 American Chemical Society Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


The status of women has changed dramatically over my 70 years in chemistry, and there have been many changes in my fields of nuclear chemistry and radiochemistry. My experiences highlight and re-emphasize the tremendous influence of our teachers and mentors. I graduated from High School in West Union, Iowa in May 1944 and could not decide whether to major in mathematics or art. I finally chose to enter Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa as an Applied Art Major which was in the school of Home Economics. Fortunately, chemistry was a required course and because of my inspiring chemistry professor, Dr. Nellie M. Naylor (Fig. 1), a “spinster” - a more polite word for what we used to call an ‘old maid’- I switched to chemistry. When I told my Applied Art counselor—also a woman and a spinster, she asked if I thought chemistry was a suitable profession for a woman? I replied, “Of course, my chemistry professor is a woman!” At that time women teachers at all levels had to resign if they married so I proclaimed I would never teach!

Figure 1. Nellie Naylor. Courtesy of the Special Collections Department, Iowa State University Library. I vowed to follow Marie Curie’s model—marry if I wanted to and have children if I chose to. However, to make a long story short, WW-II changed everything! Women successfully took over jobs formerly designated as “men’s jobs”. After the war, ‘The Jeannie was out of the bottle’ and couldn’t be put back! In the summer of 1947, I obtained a position as an undergrad research assistant at the Institute for Atomic Research at Ames, Iowa with young Prof. Don Martin and continued part-time during my coming senior year. I split mica for Geiger counter windows, learned micro ion-exchange techniques for rare earth separations, and pursued research on Szilard-Chalmers reactions and the production of new radioactive isotopes. In June 1948, I received my B.S. in Chemistry and was then officially a Nuclear Chemist—nearly 66 years ago! In Fall 1948, I stayed on to pursue my Ph. D. in Chemistry, and my husband-to-be Marvin Hoffman entered graduate school in Physics. Both Marvin & I studied photonuclear reactions at the new 68-MeV synchrotron being built near the Iowa State University campus. In Dec. 20, 1951, I received my Ph. D. My dissertation was entitled, “High Specific Radioactivities of Cobalt, Platinum, and Iridium from Photonuclear Reactions”. 186 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

I had also vowed not to marry until I finished my Ph. D. and so on December. 26, 1951, Marvin and I were married! In January, 1952, I left Ames to take a position at Oak Ridge while Marvin finished his Ph. D. This was .most unconventional, and his major professor told him: “You’ve made a terrible mistake—you should have married some nice girl who would stay home and take care of you!” That didn’t sound like me!


December 1952 Marvin decided to take a position at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where he had been earlier as a summer student so I resigned my position at Oak Ridge to join him for a promised position in the Radiochemistry group there which I eventually manage to join—a long story! My clearance was somehow lost between the two laboratories, and I missed being a co-discoverer of the new elements einsteinium (99) and fermium (100) which were discovered in the debris from the LANL first thermonuclear test in the Pacific that the group was busy analyzing. We were to remain in Los Alamos for ~ 30 years (Fig. 2)! The following are some highlights from that time.

Figure 2. Darleane, Marvin, Daryl (age 15), and Maureane (age 17) Hoffman around the piano in our home in Pajarito Acres, Los Alamos, NM; 1974. Courtesy of the author.

1953-78: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Staff Member, Project Leader, Associate Group Leader: And, yes, I did choose to have children! Daughter Maureane was born on Easter Sunday, 21 April, 1957 and son Daryl was born on Labor Day, 2 September 1959 so I took 187 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

very little time off! I found a wonderful woman whose husband brought her to our home every morning and picked her up in the evening. It was too difficult to take them somewhere else! Marvin had a position in the Test Division that often required him to be gone for extended periods of time. In later years, after our children were in school, my Mother came to live near us and they went to her home after school. And I learned a very important lesson—You can’t do it all yourself—you need help!


Los Alamos We were to remain in Los Alamos for ~30 years from March 1953-August 1984 (Figs. 3-5). From 1953-1979, I was in the Radiochemistry Group as Staff Member, Project Leader, and Associate Group Leader. The following sabbaticals proved to be vital in shaping my career: 1964-65: NSF Sr. Postdoctoral Fellowship, Kjeller, Norway. 1978-79: Guggenheim Fellowship, Seaborg’s Group, LBL. I returned from this Fellowship to become the first woman Division Leader of a scientific division at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Figure 3. Sabbatical year 1978-1979: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Darleane Hoffman & Diana Lee with “Merry-Go-Around” (MGA) for collecting and characterizing short-lived isotopes produced at the 88-inch cyclotron. Albert Ghiorso helped design and build this sample collection and detection system. We called it the MGA since he had a vertical wheel system called the VWA so he had a VW and we had an MG. (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.) 188 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 4. Farewell party August 1979. Cake says: “It was SHEer pleasure knowing you!”. (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

1979-1982: Division Leader of Chemistry-Nuclear Chemistry Division. Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Figure 5. Glenn Seaborg presenting ACS Award in Nuclear Chemistry, March 1983, Seattle, WA. There were no other women recipients of this award until Joanna Fowler (2002) followed by Silvia Jurisson (2012). Courtesy of the American Chemical Society. 189 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

1982-1984: Division Leader of Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division Los Alamos from 1982-1984 when I returned to Berkeley as tenured Professor of Chemistry and Group Leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group.

30 Years: September 1984−Present (Figures 6−12)


University of California, Berkeley, Chemistry Department 1984-91: 2nd woman tenured Professor, 1991-93 and 2012 to present: Professor Emerita: 1994-2011: Professor of Graduate School

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) (Figure 6) 1984-2001: Nuclear Science Division: Faculty Sr. Scientist, Group Leader, Co-Group Leader.

Figure 6. 1990 collaboration group, 88-inch cyclotron, Berkeley, CA. German, Russian, Swiss, U.S.A. collaboration. (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.) 190 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 7. Professor Darleane Hoffman showing the then “new” lab computer systems for data control and display to University Professor Glenn Seaborg in Building 70, Room 210, LBNL, 1991. (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

Figure 8. Faculty, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 1991. Darleane Hoffman and Birgitta Whaley are the only women. (Photograph by Michael Barnes. Used with permission.) 191 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 9. Hoffman Research Group together with Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, and Matti Nurmia. LBL, Fall 1993. (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) 1991: Co-Founder, Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science, Charter Director 1991-1996. Sr. Research Advisor 1997-2007.

Figure 10. Institute for Transactinium Science Advisory Board members, 1992. (Group inset reprinted with permission from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; other image courtesy of the author.) 192 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 11. Darleane and Marvin Hoffman, Priestley Award Banquet San Francisco, March 2000. Courtesy of the American Chemical Society.

Figure 12. (from left) A.Ghiorso, D. C. Hoffman, G. T. Seaborg, published by Imperial College Press, London, 2000 (1). (Reprinted with permission from ref. (1). Copyright 2000 Imperial College Press.) 193 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

Conclusions After this brief account of my nearly 70 years in chemistry, I have summarized and commented on some of the significant events and dramatic changes I’ve witnessed.


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The status of women and women teachers has changed dramatically, primarily due to the influence of WWII when women did “men’s jobs.” However, the fraction of women on the faculties of prestigious universities still needs to be increased. The importance of one’s spouse, or significant other, and family, and the influence of teachers and mentors, both male and female cannot be overestimated! Undergraduate research is invaluable. Both the fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry should be emphasized. Sabbaticals and travel abroad are invaluable in broadening one’s horizons and understanding the role science can play in helping to solve world problems. Recognize that “you can’t do it all by yourself”.

Acknowledgments Special thanks to my long-time friend and illustrious colleague, 2013 ACS President Marinda Li Wu, who conceived of and organized this Symposium, and invited me to participate. It is also a pleasure to thank graduate student Jennifer Shusterman without whom I would never have been able to adapt my talk to book format.

References 1.

Hoffman, D. C.; Ghiorso, A.; Seaborg, G. T. The Transuranium People: The Inside Story; Imperial College Press: London, 2000; Preface, xxiv-xxx.

194 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

A Retrospective View of My 70 Years in Chemistry - ACS Symposium

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