Gilman Hall is a building on the campus of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. Room 307 was where Glenn T. Seaborg and his coworkers identified

plutonium Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four ...

as a new element on February 23, 1941 and as such, is designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

. The building itself is designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark, recognizing the two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry that have resulted from research done in the building.

History

Gilman Hall was built from 1916 to 1917 to accommodate an expanded College of Chemistry under the leadership of

Gilbert N. Lewis Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23 or October 25, 1875 – March 23, 1946) was an American physical chemist and a dean of the college of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bon ...

. Designed by John Galen Howard, the building provided research and teaching facilities for faculty and students specializing in physical,

inorganic An inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds⁠that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as '' inorganic chemistry''. Inor ...

and

nuclear chemistry Nuclear chemistry is the sub-field of chemistry dealing with radioactivity, nuclear processes, and transformations in the nuclei of atoms, such as nuclear transmutation and nuclear properties. It is the chemistry of radioactive elements such as t ...

. It was named for Daniel Coit Gilman, president of the University of California from 1872 to 1875.

Room 307

In 1942, the Berkeley campus became quite involved in the war effort of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The top floor, or "attic," of Gilman Hall was fenced off for classified work in nuclear chemistry. Half of the rooms in the attic had small balconies that could be used as outdoor fume hoods, but the actual hoods in Gilman Hall were not equipped with fans. They operated only as chimneys, with a burner flame that produced a draft. For the war work, electrically powered fans were finally installed to vent the hoods. Plutonium research in Gilman Hall was part of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

to develop the atomic bomb. In 1942, Seaborg left Berkeley to join the Manhattan Project in Chicago. He returned to Berkeley after the war and directed the university's nuclear chemistry research. Between 1976 and 1983, as part of the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, the Department of Energy conducted remedial action to remove or shield floor and walls contaminated with uranium from the nuclear research done in the Hall.

Nobel Prizes

Two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have been awarded for research done in the building. The first was to William Giauque in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to

absolute zero Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature, a state at which a system's internal energy, and in ideal cases entropy, reach their minimum values. The absolute zero is defined as 0 K on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to −273.15 ° ...

. Seaborg received the second one in 1951 for discoveries in the

transuranium element The transuranium (or transuranic) elements are the chemical elements with atomic number greater than 92, which is the atomic number of uranium. All of them are radioactively unstable and decay into other elements. Except for neptunium and pluton ...

s. Four other individuals who did research here received Nobel Prizes for later work as well.

Gilman Hall today

Gilman Hall has been used continuously by the College of Chemistry for 80 years; today it is occupied by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. However, its laboratory equipment is no longer suitable for modern chemical research and as such, the University has renovated and converted some of the rooms into offices, classrooms, and small research laboratories. Following the FUSRAP remediation work, Gillman Hall has been certified as safe to current radiologic standards. The University of California is responsible for maintenance and monitoring of the shielded contamination.

References

* * * * {{National Register of Historic Places in California School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in California University of California, Berkeley buildings National Historic Landmarks in the San Francisco Bay Area Beaux-Arts architecture in California Neoclassical architecture in California John Galen Howard buildings Science and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area National Register of Historic Places in Berkeley, California World War II on the National Register of Historic Places in California Berkeley landmarks in Berkeley, California