Glenn T. Seaborg

Well, no one's ever been able to do that.

But there has been lead converted to gold and it was by a fellow called Glenn Seaborg, a physicist, and one of the recent elements discovered in the periodic table was named after him, Seaborgium, one of these things you make in a reactor.

Anyway, he was able to put lead into a nuclear reactor and after spending about 25 million dollars uh got a fraction of a gram of lead so you can convert lead into gold the philosophers stone the medieval alchemists were actually right but they were wrong so you can do it but you've got to have very deep pockets there's also gold in seawater um if you like to produce gold from seawater which the germans tried to do they had massive gold reparations after the first world war i think it was five billion French crowns of gold, the Germans had one great asset, and that was their chemists and their physicists, who'd won many Nobel Prizes.

And Fritz Haber, we're all very grateful for Fritz Haber because he developed a method of making fertilisers from air.

Well, no one's ever been able to do that.

But there has been lead converted to gold and it was by a fellow called Glenn Seaborg.

a physicist and one of the um recent elements discovered in the periodic table was named after him c borgium one of these things you make in a reactor anyway he was able to put um lead into a nuclear reactor and after spending about 25 million dollars uh got a fraction of a gram of lead so you can convert lead into gold.

The philosophers Stone, the medieval alchemists were actually right, but they were wrong.

The United States Atomic Energy Commission provides this booklet to help you achieve such understanding.

Edward J. Brunenkant, Director, Division of Technical Information United States Atomic Energy Commission Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman James T. Ramey Wilfred E. Johnson Dr. Theos J. Thompson Dr. Clarence E. Larson End of Introduction

SECTION 2 OF THE ATOM AND THE OCEAN historians of the future will record that man almost simultaneously unlocked the secret of atomic energy and ventured into new domains beneath the closed doors of the world ocean in one of the greatest exploration endeavors of all time history may also show how these two efforts to benefit mankind became closely interthreaded how nuclear energy in its many forms and applications played a major role in the efforts to explore and exploit the other three-quarters of our planet and moreover how the very development of a nuclear technology enforced our need to know more about the sea around us nuclear energy is a fundamental physical phenomenon like the actions of the wheel the lever or the inclined plane like chemical combustion or electricity it is but another means for men to do useful work whether that work be in the interests of science commerce recreation or war to this extent nuclear energy is universal as applicable in the sea as it is on land or in outer space wherever man goes and whatever he does he requires energy to get him there and energy for his work or play when he arrives some of the places he now seeks to pioneer are hard to investigate by any one encumbered with bulky traditional energy sources coal fuel oil or storage batteries the ocean in its full three-dimensional scope is one of these places The atom is the most concentrated source of energy and one of the most diverse.

Thus, not only are we able to do familiar things better with nuclear energy the nuclear-powered submarine is a dramatic example, but we are also able to do things never before possible, such as studying the diffusion of dissolved salts in the open ocean or extending the useful life of seafoods through irradiation.

There was internal dissent, though, and it's often flattened.

The Frank Report, James Frank with Glenn Seaborg and Leo Szilard, argued for international control and a demonstration.

The scientific panel, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Compton, Lawrence, disagreed, concluding no technical test would convince Japan to surrender.

The interim committee concurred on the twenty-first of June.

And so there's a downturn in business.

Finally, the company starts investigating and they hire these brilliant scientists from Harvard.

to investigate.

But when the scientists from Harvard say to the company directly, we think it's the radium, the company cover up the report.

They hire other specialists who might say other things and that's what they choose to publish.

And they cover up the report that actually connects it fairly early on to say, actually, it is the radium.

And it's actually something that actually becomes even more true as time goes on.

And this is sort of skipping ahead a little bit in the story.