American chemist
Ralph A. James
Ralph James was one of four young chemists in Glenn Seaborg’s wartime team who identified americium and curium in 1944, elements 95 and 96.
- Elements credited
- 2
- Discoveries
- 1944
- Co-discoverers
- 3
- Where
- United States
The work
At the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, the team bombarded plutonium with helium nuclei in a cyclotron and with neutrons in reactors. The products were radioactive, but the new elements stubbornly refused to separate from each other and from the rare earths.
James worked on the chemistry that eventually told them apart. Curium was identified first, in the summer of 1944, and americium later that year. The discoveries were kept secret until after the war, when Seaborg revealed them on a children’s radio quiz show in November 1945.
Americium and Curium side by side
Life and career
James joined the Manhattan Project as a young chemist and spent the war years on the separation chemistry of the new elements. After the war he continued working in nuclear chemistry.