Nuclear chemist Darleane Hoffman and surface chemist Gabor Somorjai received the Enrico Fermi Award from President Biden and Vice-President Harris for their pioneering work. Photos courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
The Biden Administration today (Tuesday, March 28) named...
An artist’s rendering of a crewed Martian biomanufactory powered by photovoltaics and capable of synthesizing food and pharmaceuticals, manufacturing biopolymers and recycling biological waste. (Artwork credit: Davian Ho, UC Berkeley)
The high efficiency, light weight and flexibility of the latest solar cell technology means photovoltaics could...
The College salutes the pioneer women chemistry faculty at Cal. Both as scientists, and as early faculty members at the University, they helped to pave the way for the next generations of women faculty and students.
Elements on the periodic table that make up the lanthanides, or rare-earth heavy elements.
Lanthanides are rare-earth heavy metals with useful magnetic properties and a knack for emitting light. Researchers had long assumed that lanthanides’ toxicity risk was low and therefore safe to implement in a number of high-tech breakthroughs we now take for...
Harold Urey worked for the Manhattan Project. But by contrast, the Nobel-prize winning chemist distanced himself from nuclear weapons development after the war. His search for science beyond defense work prompted a shift into studying the origins of life and lunar geology. Now, this absorbing biography "The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey" by science historian Matthew Shindell, uses the researcher’s life to show how a conscientious chemist navigated the cold war.
Urey at his desk, photograph, circa late 1940s (Northwest Indiana Times)
Missoula first noticed Harold Urey in May of 1915, when the University of Montana announced the winners of the annual C.A. Duniway Scholarship Books. Urey, a 22-year-old freshman from Indiana by way of a mining camp in the Gallatin Mountains, received the biology award....
Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s predecessor, the UC Radiation Laboratory, discovered berkelium in 1949, and californium in 1950. Today, Berkeley Lab scientists are using state-of-the-art instruments at the Molecular Foundry to better understand how actinides like berkelium and californium could serve to accelerate...
Berkeley Lab scientists Leticia Arnedo-Sanchez (from left), Katherine Shield, Korey Carter, and Jennifer Wacker had to take precautions against radioactivity as well as coronavirus to conduct experiments with the rare element, einsteinium. (Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab)
In 2017, radiochemistry graduate student Mark Straub left the comfortable academic environs of UC Berkeley and moved to the middle of New Mexico, where he spent his summer working full time at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the birthplace of the Manhattan Project. There, Mark teamed up with LANL scientists ...
The College salutes the pioneer women chemistry faculty at Cal. Both as scientists, and as early faculty members at the University, they helped to pave the way for the next generations of women faculty and students.
