American chemist
Kenneth Street Jr.
Kenneth Street Jr. was one of the four Berkeley scientists who made and identified californium, element 98, in 1950.
How Californium was found
The team bombarded a few micrograms of curium with helium ions in the 60-inch cyclotron. Street worked on the ion-exchange separations that picked the new element out of the target, identifying about 5,000 atoms.
They named it after the university and the state. Californium-252 is now used as a powerful portable neutron source, for starting nuclear reactors and finding gold and oil.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Street was a member of Glenn Seaborg’s Berkeley group in the years when it produced a new element every year or two.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1950.