Albert Ghiorso

July 15th 1915

An American nuclear scientist who helped discover several chemical elements on the periodic table.

He was born in Vallejo, California and grew up in Alameda, California. As a teenager, he built radio circuitry and earned a reputation for reaching radio frequency distances that outdid the military.

He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937. After graduation, he worked for a company that produced emergency communication devices, and invented the world's first commercial Geiger counter, which evolved into his participation in the Manhattan Project.

He was introduced to Glenn T. Seaborg through a mutual friendship between their wives who also worked as secretaries at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory.

Seaborg and Ghiorso's collaboration was most fruitful in the early days of the cyclotron, when its reuslts were hard to identify and detect. Their work resulted in many elements being discovered at UC Berkeley, and Ghiorso is credited with having co-discovered the following elements:

Americium around 1945, Curium in 1944, Berkelium in 1949, Californium in 1950, Einsteinium in 1952, Fermium in 1953, Mendelevium in 1955, Nobelium in 1958-59, Lawrencium in 1961, Rutherfordium in 1969, Hahnium in 1970 and Seaborgium in 1974.