1976 Seaborg Award: John O. Rasmussen

Award Statement C&EN (Page 6)

A native of Twin Falls, Idaho, the award winner received his B.S. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology in 1948, his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952.

The first milestone in Rasmussen’s illustrious career was his Ph.D. thesis work in 1951 on alpha radioactivity in the rare-earth elements. In 1949 Dr. S. G. Thompson, Dr. A. Ghiorso, and Rasmussen, working in Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg’s laboratory, discovered an entirely new group of radioactive, alpha particle-emitting isotopes. Previously, alpha radioactivity was known chiefly in elements heavier than lead.

This work led Rasmussen into the first comprehensive restudy of alpha decay theory in two decades. As a result, he has contributed more than 20 articles and two major monographs on alpha decay theory, particularly on the microscopic description of alpha cluster formation in spherical and deformed nuclei.