Darleane C. Hoffman

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Darleane C. Hoffman (born November 8, 1926) is a nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley.^[1]

She received her B. S. (1948) and Ph. D. (1951) degrees in chemistry (nuclear) from Iowa State University. She was a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a year and then joined her husband at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory where she began as a staff member in 1953. She became Division Leader of the Chemistry and Nuclear Chemistry Division (Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division) in 1979. She left Los Alamos in 1984 to accept appointments as tenured professor in the Department of Chemistry at UC-Berkeley and Leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear & Radiochemistry Group at LBNL. Additionally, she helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at LLNL in 1991 and became its first Director, serving until 1996 when she "retired" to become Senior Advisor and Charter Director. ^[2]

[edit] Awards

Priestley Medal, 2000 (only the second woman to win the Priestley, after Mary L. Good in 1997)
National Medal of Science, 1997
Garvan-Olin Medal, 1990
ACS Award for Nuclear Chemistry, 1983 (first woman to win the award)
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1978