Darleane Christian Hoffman, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, is the winner of the American Chemical Society's Garvan Medal. Established in 1936 to recognize distinguished contributions by women chemists, the award carries with it a $4,500 cash prize, a gold medal, and a bronze replica of the medal.
It was at Los Alamos, where Hoffman worked between 1953 and 1984 with the radiochemistry group and the nuclear chemistry division, that she discovered plutonium-244 in nature. Her early research in the separation processes of the heavy elements was instrumental in the development of techniques that are still in use today. Currently, Hoffman's research is focused on the chemical and nuclear properties of the transplutonium elements. Recently, she and her group of 10 graduate students performed the first aqueous chemistry on hahnium (element 105) using the longest known isotope, which...
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