Priestley Medal
Glenn Seaborg wins 1979 Priestley Medal "With the overthrow of the gang of four, scientists in the People's Republic of China are moving more heavily into basic research." The comment came from Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, winner of this year's Priestley Medal, the highest honor the American Chemical Society can bestow. He had just returned from a three-week-long visit to China along with 10 other U.S. chemists and chemical engineers. In his office at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, he talked to C&EN about the many things that keep him busy these days—from teaching freshman chemistry, to worrying about the nation's energy problems, to his strong feeling that the internationalization of science can help solve many of the world's mutual prob lems. It was the last interest that took Seaborg to China, where he found in Fushon a potential solution to at least part of the world's energy problems in a working, moderate-sized oil shale con version plant. "Favorably impressed" by the entire trip, he observes that chemical research in today's China has reflected the nation's changing political history over the years. That is, most of the older sci entists were trained in U.S. universities before the government switched to com munism, an intermediate group was trained in the Soviet Union when China's relationships with that country were still friendly, and a still younger group has learned about chemistry on Chinese soil or in other communist countries. Discussion of the Chinese visit triggered Seaborg into an enthusiastic expansion of his view that the living standards of all nations, and perhaps their political relationships, can be strength ened by a strong international exchange of scientific know-how among developed and developing nations. "We can't really prosper in this country and in other developed nations without using our scientific knowledge to help the two thirds of the world that has a much lower standard of living than our own. In this respect, chemistry will play a major role because it is the most utilitarian of the sciences. It is something that could very rapidly bring about the attainment of real equity for the developing nations," Seaborg told C&EN. The statement falls into line with Seaborg's proposal of about a year ago, when he suggested that one way to move toward an era of scientific equity might be through the creation of an international chemical society. Since the time he broached the prospect officially at the 174th ACS National Meeting in Chicago, 30
C&EN July 10, 1978
Seaborg said, American chemists have been strongly supportive. The idea also proved appealing to chemists in India and the eastern bloc nations, especially Po land, he said. However, he was obviously disappointed in the lukewarm if not cold response his suggestion evoked in Britain and West Germany, two of the countries that could provide significant input to such a world-oriented operation. "The basis of their opposition seems to be that they are doing fine now in their own countries and don't feel that they have any real reason for participating in the kind of mutual effort that I have been talking about," says Seaborg, now chair man of the ACS International Activities Committee. If everything falls into place in the right way, it probably would take about 10 years to establish a working international chemical society, he continues. It's pos sible that it might be accomplished through some modification of the Inter national Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry, an organization that has no individual members but which does have machinery in place for strengthening contacts among chemists of all nations, Seaborg says. Another approach, he suggests, might be to build on the biennial meetings of the Presidents of Chemical Societies, a project of former ACS president Charles C. Ο ver berger that has been very active for the past five years. Already the group has met in Washington, D.C.; in The Hague; in Alicante, Spain; and will con vene again in the U.S. capital at the ACS meeting in the fall of 1979. Seaborg believes that one of the best examples of the kind of down-to-earth
chemical contacts that can be forged be tween two countries at different stages of development is the ACS-sponsored "workshop" which took 20 chemists to Egypt in 1977. With the support of the U.S. Agency for International Develop ment, the American visitors focused their expertise on five areas that the Egyptian government felt were high-priority needs. These included better methods of pest control, mineral beneficiation, corrosion protection, cotton modification, and uti lization of fibrous waste materials such as bagasse for useful purposes. As for the world's energy problems, Seaborg's natural optimism is clouded with some very serious concerns. He be lieves that the U.S. is still not making enough of an effort through research ex penditures on the development of all types of energy sources, including solar, geothermal, and nuclear fission and fu sion. "We should be looking at all sources that are technically and financially fea sible and not place our hopes on energy solutions that show no sign of paying off for many years if at all," Seaborg says, with some passion. He is encouraged that President Carter appears to be moving away from an attitude that surfaced in the early days of his Administration and that maintained that conservation in the main would provide a major hedge against the energy debacle that Seaborg believes awaits the U.S. in the not too distant fu ture. The man who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 adds that the U.S. is placing itself at a distinct disadvantage in the energy sweepstakes if other countries continue to develop nuclear energy while the U.S. drags its heels, especially with regard to the breeder reactor. "I can't say that I disagree with Presi dent Carter's decision to block the Clinch River breeder reactor, since it already was becoming outmoded and prohibitively expensive. On the other hand, I think it will prove counterproductive if we delay our own development of the breeder while other nations gain the initiative." In the solar energy area, Seaborg be lieves that the U.S. hasn't yet done the kind of research that will make energy from the sun a viable option. Research in the national laboratories should be more strongly oriented toward basic research into utilization of biomass and catalytic solar conversion of water to hydrogen, while placing less relative emphasis on direct photovoltaic conversion of sunlight to electric power. Good humoredly, he poked fun at his growing disillusionment over the pros-
pects of fusion power, something he now considers "nearly impossible." "Twenty years ago, if you asked me when fusion power will arrive, I would have said 20 years from now. If you ask me today, my opinion hasn't changed that much. I'll still say 20 years. But I really think it probably will be a lot longer than that." Seaborg's ideas about one possible approach to making fusion work that has been almost entirely overlooked until now borrow from his own years of experience with accelerators that propel atomic nuclei at tremendous energies. Admitting that "it's just an idea," he suggests that it is at least theoretically possible to achieve useful fusion by bombarding a pellet of deuterium or a deuterium-tritium mixture with ions as heavy as gold. The idea is closely related to similar highly financed fusion projects in which deuterium-tritium pellets are bombarded by one or more high-powered lasers. However, Seaborg maintains that the heavy ion approach, properly funded, might produce results quicker than laser fusion will. "We already know how to accelerate the heavy ions and you can more or less design a heavy ion accelerator today of sufficient intensity to do the job, whereas the lasers have a very long way to go in this respect," he says. Agreeing that environmentalists may have significantly slowed development of nuclear energy in the U.S., Seaborg emphasizes that in his opinion atomic power is a "benign" energy option, which will take less of a toll of the environment and human health than coal-fueled electric power plants already have. However, Seaborg is not one to shriek
"full speed ahead, damn the environmentalists." He is a very active member of the California Council of Economic Balance, a group of labor leaders, business executives, and "interested citizens" who are trying to strike some balance between the environmental and economic future of California. Seaborg is also chairman of the Citizen's for Urban Wilderness Areas, a group of "environmentally oriented" individuals who are working toward the acquisition of more park land and open space for the citizenry. And, although he doesn't agree with its viewpoint on nuclear energy, he also is a member of the Sierra Club. Seaborg seems to have little difficulty in balancing his many outside interests with what is certainly a full-time job as associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and university professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He spends considerable time with his graduate students and postdocs sharing their mutual interests in nuclear chemistry and heavy ion reactions. He also keeps in close contact with his longtime coworker Albert Ghiorso, the man who, with Seaborg, has helped stretch the periodic table from its traditional list of 92 elements to 106 at last count. There is still some controversy over whether the Berkeley group or nuclear scientists at Dubna in the U.S.S.R. can claim priority in the discovery of elements 104, 105, and 106. Seaborg and Ghiorso believe that there is little question that the Soviets did not find element 104 among the spontaneous fission products that resulted from the bombardment of plutonium with neon at Dubna in 1964. Ever since then, including as recently as a few weeks ago, the Berkeley group has been attempting to produce element 104 by the Soviet technique with absolutely no success, Seaborg says, noting that the world scientific community has no doubt that Ghiorso and his colleagues actually produced element 104 by their own methods. Looking beyond element 106, Seaborg believes that it should be possible to produce elements 107 and 108 by the bombardment techniques pioneered by himself and Ghiorso, even though the elements undoubtedly will have extremely fleeting half-lives. He also is optimistic that the Berkeley techniques will yield still undiscovered, relatively stable elements on the "island of stability," a group of atoms, which, Seaborg says, should fill out the periodic table between atomic numbers 114 and 126. Ghiorso disagrees, maintaining that using present bombardment techniques, these elements would fall apart before attaining the stability Seaborg says they might have. To enforce his contention, he has bet Seaborg $100 that he will not succeed. For his part, Seaborg agrees with Ghiorso that past methods of bombarding heavy elements in accelerators that achieve the propulsion of atoms as heavy as neon may never take him to the elusive island of stability. However, he believes
that by combining the Super Hilac, a linear accelerator that propels ions as heavy as xenon to energies of 8 MeV per nucléon with the circular Bevatron that can accelerate protons to 6 GeV, it may be possible to synthesize the superheavy elements. If it happens, Seaborg explains, twisting his hands around each other in space to demonstrate what he means, the magic combination may be unlocked by a phenomenon known as the "deep inelastic transfer reaction." He suggests that under certain conditions—when heavy nuclei strike ions of large enough size—instead of coming together to form a compound nucleus, they rotate with respect to each other in such a way that the target and the projectile can have a wide range of masses. Among them, Seaborg predicts, there should be an atom from the island of stability. Possibly, bombardment of californium or einsteinium with uranium might do the trick, he says. As for his bet with Ghiorso, Seaborg comments, "It's a bet I just can't lose, if you think about it. I can always say more or less legitimately that we haven't exhausted all the possibilities yet, that we haven't carried out all the proper experiments. On the other hand, if we do the right experiment, there will be no question about it. The answer will be there and we'll be able to prove it." In addition to his ongoing research, Seaborg still teaches a lab session in freshman chemistry and occasionally addresses the entire freshman class of about 1500 students. He also seems quite delighted with the role he plays in the "cluster freshman chemistry group." Intended to be a "broadening experience," the small group of students in the cluster see Seaborg once a week to discuss their problems with courses or professors, wonder about their job prospects in industry or academia, swap philosophical ideas, and generally enjoy themselves. With obvious concern that the question might not be asked, Seaborg told C&EN about his long experience with Science Service, an organization that promotes two of his major interests: encouraging young people in scientific careers and furthering the public understanding of science. He's served as Science Service president since 1966 and has judged the Science Talent Search every year since then, as well as the finals of the organization's National Science Fairs. When asked whether he still plays any sort of role in international nuclear politics, as he did when he served for 10 years as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Seaborg gave C&EN a decisive and somewhat relieved-sounding "No." He says he still talks and writes about such matters when asked, but delivers nothing that might be interpreted as an official policy statement. "It's not that I don't feel strongly about such things as nuclear proliferation and national energy policy, it's just that I don't like putting myself in the position of second-guessing my successors," Seaborg says modestly. D July 10, 1978 C&EN
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