ALBERT GHIORSO

ELEMENT: THE AMAZING LIFE OF ALBERT GHIORSO

Albert Ghiorso is arguably one of the most creative and accomplished scientists of the 20th Century. Over a period of thirty years, he co-discovered 12 chemical elements, more than anyone else in history. Working at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab with particle accelerators and Nobel Prize winners, he succeeded in the daunting task of producing and identifying one new element after another, typically one atom at a time, at a rate of roughly one new element every three years. He continually created breakthroughs in the field of nuclear science, including detectors, ultrafast chemistry, and innovative accelerators. Ghiorso never had a resume nor even made a list of his 160+ publications. Yet his published record speaks powerfully for his extraordinary contributions in adding to the periodic chart all the elements from 95 to 106, from the trans-plutonium elements to the edge of the superheavy island of stability. His name is inextricably linked to more than ten percent of the elements, a record that will never be eclipsed and is seldom equaled in any field of science.

This book will be a full-length biography of Ghiorso. The goal is to capture Ghiorso-the-man-the-scientist, and to place him in the context of the research program of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the U. S. nuclear science program, so that the reader will feel that he knew Ghiorso personally, and perhap even participated in the exciting discoveries. The book will be aimed at the general reader interested in the history of science, but will include details of the science behind the quest to penetrate into the realm of the superheavy elements.

The schedule calls for the book to be published in 2012.

For more information about this project, please contact the author:

Dr. Robert W. Schmieder

4295 Walnut Blvd.
Walnut Creek, CA 94596

(925) 934-3735

Robert (a) Schmieder.com
http://www.schmieder.com/ghiorso

About the author