1941 - Science

Science

The transuranium element plutonium (atomic number 94) isolated at Berkeley by Michigan-born physicist Glenn (Theodore) Seaborg, 29, and Edwin M. McMillan has a Pu 239 isotope that shows promise of having a higher energy yield from nuclear fission than uranium (see 1939; nuclear reaction, 1942).

Vannevar Bush heads the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) created by President Roosevelt June 28 (see analog computer, 1930).

Archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans dies near Boars Hill, Oxford July 11 at age 90. His excavations in Crete turned up a pre-Phoenician script; German-born biochemist Rudolf Schoenheimer commits suicide at New York September 11 at age 43, having revolutionized metabolic studies by developing a technique of "tagging" molecules with radioactive isotopes; Nobel physical chemist Walther H. Nernst dies at Bad Muskau in Prussia November 18 at age 77.