American nuclear chemist · 1917–2006
Arthur Wahl
Arthur Wahl was a 23-year-old graduate student when, in February 1941, he carried out the experiment that identified plutonium.
How Plutonium was found
Seaborg, Kennedy and Wahl had bombarded uranium with deuterons in the Berkeley cyclotron. On the night of 23 February 1941 Wahl performed the oxidation experiment that showed the product could not be separated from a new element, 94, by any known chemistry.
Plutonium remained secret until after the war. It was named after Pluto, following uranium and neptunium.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Born 1917 · Died 2006
Wahl was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He worked at Los Alamos during the war, developing methods to purify plutonium, and then spent his career at Washington University in St. Louis, studying nuclear fission.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1940.