Arthur Charles Wahl (September 8, 1917 – March 6, 2006) was an American
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
who, as a doctoral student of
Glenn T. Seaborg at 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 ...
, first isolated
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 ...
(94) in February 1941 shortly after the element
neptunium
Neptunium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Np and atomic number 93. A radioactivity, radioactive actinide metal, neptunium is the first transuranic element. It is named after Neptune, the planet beyond Uranus in the Solar Syste ...
(93) was discovered by
McMillan and
Abelson in 1940.
Wahl was a researcher on 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 ...
in
Los Alamos until 1946, when he joined the faculty of
Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Beginning in 1952, he was the
Henry V. Farr Professor of Radiochemistry; he received the
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...
Award in Nuclear Chemistry in 1966 and retired in 1983. He moved back to Los Alamos in 1991 and continued his scientific writing until 2005.
He died in 2006 of Parkinson's disease and pneumonia.
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1917 births
20th-century American chemists
2006 deaths
Iowa State University alumni
Manhattan Project people
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Nuclear chemists
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