2011 Seaborg Award: David J. Morrissey

David J. Morrissey has made a career of studying exotic, rare, and short-lived nuclei and developing techniques to separate these nuclei from thousands of other nuclear reaction products. Morrissey is one of the most important early leaders who recognized the potential of the projectile fragmentation technique to produce and study rare isotopes, colleagues say.

Morrissey, 57, received a B.S. in chemistry with distinction from Pennsylvania State University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley.

While he was studying at Penn State, his interest shifted between chemistry and physics, eventually settling on nuclear chemistry and conducting undergraduate research with nuclear chemist Warren Miller. Morrissey’s Ph.D. work was completed under the direction of Glenn T. Seaborg.

“Seaborg was a true pioneer in the discovery of both unknown chemical elements and isotopes,” Morrissey notes. “He was always optimistic about going beyond what had already been achieved, and it is interesting that only today we are beginning to see real limits to the sizes of nuclei and distribution of neutrons and protons in a nucleus.”

Morrissey continued at UC Berkeley as a postgraduate fellow working with Luciano G. Moretto. Morrissey began his faculty appointment at Michigan State and his association with NSCL in 1981. He played a leading role in the evolution of NSCL into a world-leading facility for the production and study of rare isotopes.