American chemist
Leon O. Morgan
Leon Morgan was a member of the Manhattan Project team that identified americium, element 95, in 1944.
How Americium was found
At the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Seaborg’s group exposed plutonium to neutrons for long periods. Morgan worked on separating the products, and americium was identified at the end of 1944.
It was named after the Americas, mirroring europium, the element directly above it in the lanthanide series. Today a tiny amount of americium-241 sits inside most household smoke detectors.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Morgan was one of the young chemists recruited to Chicago for the plutonium project, and he continued to work in nuclear and inorganic chemistry after the war.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1944.