2014 Seaborg Award: Walter Loveland

At MIT, a class in nuclear and radiochemistry taught by Charles D. Coryell, a scientist on the Manhattan Project, sparked Loveland’s interest in the field. Coryell was “an inspirational figure,” he says. His undergraduate research adviser, nuclear chemist Glen E. Gordon, also proved an important influence. Advising Loveland on where to pursue his graduate studies, Gordon pointed to the University of Washington—“a place where physics and chemistry would be treated together, because that’s important for this profession,” Loveland says. So after graduating from MIT with a major in chemistry in 1961, Loveland headed to Seattle.

He did his graduate work in the nuclear physics lab at the University of Washington, studying nuclear fission. After he received a Ph.D. in 1966, he returned to the Chicago area to do postdoctoral work at Argonne National Laboratory in the lab of John R. Huizenga.

In 1979, Seaborg, Loveland, and David J. Morrissey, now at Michigan State University, explained why scientists had been having difficulty synthesizing superheavy elements by using complete fusion reactions (Science 1979, DOI: 10.1126/science.203.4382.711). With subsequent work, Loveland developed a comprehensive model that is now widely used to predict the cross sections of heavy-element production.

Loveland also pioneered the use of radioactive beams in heavy-element synthesis. Prior to the 1980s, scientists had mostly collided stable isotopes together in their quest to create new elements. Loveland devised ways to use radioactive isotopes as projectiles, thus greatly expanding the range of nuclear reactions possible.

In 2003, Loveland and colleagues experimentally confirmed the discovery of element 110 (Phys. Rev. C 2003, DOI: 10.1103/physrevc.67.064609).