![]() | But in 1996 a major change happened in the ‘direction’ of the Institute that was brought about by an American who is now shown on your screen. As a small boy he was brought up in a poor working class family where his grandfather had moved from Sweden as an immigrant worker. His father was a machinist like his own father before him and he said that he would most probably have become a machinist himself if it had not been for the family moving to California to find a better life. His name was Glenn Seaborg. Many of you here today will have never have heard of him, but fellow scientists around the world say that he was one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists. In this respect although he was a Nobel Laureate, he also attained immortality in the scientific world by having an Element on the Periodic Table named in his honour – Element106 Seaborgium. This greatest of all scientific accolades, higher than a Nobel Prize in the physical sciences, was also a unique situation for the world as well, for Glenn was the first person in the history of the world to be given this greatest scientific distinction whilst he was still alive. In this respect all other great scientists such as Einstein, Rutherford and Currie et al had this pre-eminent scientific honour bestowed upon them posthumously. The main reason for this was that he had discovered during his lifetime nearly 10% of all the known Elements in the Universe. |