[finding aid]. - American Memory - Library of Congress

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in 1940, and as a public official who shaped United States nuclear policy as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1961 to 1971. The collection reflects Seaborg's diligence as a thorough record keeper and touches on most facets of his long life and career. The papers are arranged in fifteen series: Journals; Historical File; General Correspondence; Societies, Committees, and Events; Atomic Energy Commission; University of California, Berkeley; Transuranium Research; Subject File; Speeches; Writings; Miscellany; Microfilm; Oversize; Classified; and Formerly Restricted Data. The Journals series contains three versions of Seaborg's journals including notebooks in which he recorded his daily activities, a typed transcript prepared by his staff, and a printed copy produced by the University of California Press. Although most of the notebooks, which span the years 1942-1981, are original, the collection includes only redacted photocopies of notebooks dating from Seaborg's years as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. A typed transcript of the journals is available for the years 1927-1934 and 1961-1998. The transcript, produced from the notebooks, contains expanded journal entries supplemented by copies of relevant correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, programs, and printed matter. The printed journal covers the years 1927-1990 and, like the typed journal, consists of expanded journal entries and supplemental material. Some entries and documents included in the typed transcript are omitted from the printed journal. Most of the printed volumes include proper name indexes. Appended to the printed journal are volumes containing additional documents, clippings, and material from press conferences. Seaborg strove to amass a thorough record of his activities. The Historical File series contains photocopies of documents which he assembled to chronicle his life from childhood to his assumption of the AEC chairmanship in 1961. Although the subject matter overlaps with other series in the collection, the Historical File includes material not available elsewhere in the papers. Of particular note are documents relating to his early transuranium research at the University of California at Berkeley, his work on the atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project, his membership on the first AEC General Advisory Committee, and his chancellorship of the University of California, Berkeley. The General Correspondence series contains Seaborg's correspondence with American and foreign scientists, government officials, academic colleagues, science writers, and students. Prominent correspondents include Arthur Holly Compton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, V. I. Gol'danskii, Leslie R. Groves, Chet Holifield, Lyndon B. Johnson, Frédéric and Irène Joliot- Curie, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Isadore Perlman, Andronik M. Petrosyants, Emilio Segrè, Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965), and Harry S. Truman. The Societies, Committees, and Events series documents the breadth of Seaborg's professional associations outside the two institutional affiliations with which he is most often noted, the University of California at Berkeley and the Atomic Energy Commission. Files pertaining to professional scientific organizations, most notably the American Chemical Society, record Seaborg's attendance at conferences, service on committees and boards, and presidential terms. The series also contains material relating to Seaborg's associations with foreign scientists and international scientific organizations filed under the names of countries, organizations, or events. A large file relating to the Soviet Union contains material documenting American- Soviet exchange programs from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The often personal rapport Seaborg established with Soviet scientists is evident in this series as well as the General Correspondence. The Societies, Committees, and Events files also document Seaborg's effort on behalf of educational reform. The series chronicles his work on various federal and state educational panels, including the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1959 to 1961. Also included are files relating to educational projects such as Seaborg's chairmanship of the Chemical Education Materials Study, his participation in numerous science fairs, including the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and his support for educational radio and television programming. Lastly, the series contains files relating to Seaborg's receipt of numerous awards and honors, most significantly the Nobel Prize in chemistry which he received with Edwin M. McMillan in 1951 for the discovery of plutonium. Although the Societies, Committees, and Events series provides a detailed account of more than sixty years of Seaborg's professional associations, researchers interested in contacts he maintained while chairman of the AEC during the 1960s should consult the Atomic Energy Commission series travel file as well. The Atomic Energy Commission series largely concerns Seaborg's chairmanship of the commission. The bulk of the series consists of a travel file related to Seaborg's extensive domestic and foreign travel as chairman and composed primarily of a chronological file documenting individual trips through correspondence, briefings, reports, itineraries, lists of people met, and related publicity. Seaborg's travels to approximately sixty foreign countries included trips to the Soviet Union in 1963, 1969, 1970, and 1971. A separate geographical file contains background information for many of these countries, including material on meetings with foreign officials in Washington. A foreign trip file includes a list of all of Seaborg's foreign travel, copies of travel reports, and a compilation of letters written by him to United States presidents concerning the trips. The chronological file also documents Seaborg's domestic travel as well as events held locally in Washington, D.C. Seaborg's domestic travel Papers of Glenn Theodore Seaborg 6
included trips to national laboratories, attendance at committee and board meetings, and speaking engagements at colleges, universities, and conferences and before civic groups. In documenting these events, the Atomic Energy Commission travel file complements material found in the Societies, Committees, and Events series. Also among the Atomic Energy Commission series are records of meetings and telephone conversations held by Seaborg during his tenure as chairman. Summary notes of meetings detail discussions on a broad range of issues from civilian use of nuclear technology to arms control. The file constituting an official record of his telephone calls and meetings, available in the collection only on microfilm, yields perhaps the most detailed recounting of Seaborg's meetings, providing a more thorough account than is recorded in his journals. The series also includes a file, deemed personal by AEC regulations, which reveals significant facets of Seaborg's chairmanship. Included are address lists, membership lists, congratulatory letters on his appointment and reappointments as chairman, employment and financial disclosures, and foreign national guest lists. Scrapbooks containing clippings, programs, and photographs are available on microfilm only. The earliest material found in the Atomic Energy Commission series documents Seaborg's membership on various AEC committees prior to his chairmanship. Among other committee records, the file includes correspondence and minutes from Seaborg's participation in the commission's first General Advisory Committee from 1947 to 1950. The committee's work, which laid the foundation for a national nuclear policy, is further documented by copies of correspondence, minutes, and reports found in the Historical File series. The University of California, Berkeley series consists primarily of administrative files following Seaborg's return to the university in 1971. The bulk of the series relates to the Chemistry Department, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and Lawrence Hall of Science and their respective committee work, budget and fund-raising, and program development. A general administrative file concerns the campus at large and contains Seaborg's correspondence with the university's chancellor, president, and regents. Although the series contains very little concerning Seaborg's term as chancellor apart from congratulatory letters on his appointment, information about his chancellorship is available in his journals, the Historical File series, and notes assembled for his book, Chancellor at Berkeley, in the Writings series. Material concerning other University of California campuses and the university's management of Energy Department laboratories can be found in the Societies, Committees, and Events series. The Transuranium Research series documents Seaborg's work as a scientist during the 1940s and 1950s, including his discovery of and exploration into the chemical properties of transuranium elements. The bulk of the series concerns his work at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory before and after World War II and at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago during the war. While raw scientific data preserved in the series is fragmentary, correspondence, memoranda, reports, and logs detail the results of the laboratories' scientific work and reveal the myriad administrative issues involved in operating both facilities. During the last thirty years of his life, Seaborg collected numerous documents recording personal experiences at the laboratories including personnel records, room assignments, floor plans, and staff recollections. The Transuranium Research series also contains a patent file useful in tracing the evolution of intellectual property rights in the nuclear science field and as a valuable source documenting Seaborg's scientific work. Seaborg held more than forty patents for his scientific discoveries, including the only patents issued for chemical elements. Also featured in the series is a file Seaborg titled “Social and Political Implications of Scientific Research” reflecting the attempts on the part of scientists, many of them working on the Manhattan Project, to cope with the moral implications of their scientific research. Included are correspondence, minutes, statements, legislation, newsletters, and drafts of writings. The bulk of the material dates between 1945 and 1946 and appears to have been created or collected by the Atomic Scientists of Chicago. The Subject File series contains background information on topics principally relating to nuclear science, such as nuclear medicine, nuclear waste disposal, and management of excess plutonium. Files on arms control document the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which Seaborg supported. Also included are informational files on numerous transuranium elements, many of them discovered by Seaborg. Controversies surrounding the naming of new elements are explored in the series. A large file focuses in particular on the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's initial rejection of “seaborgium” as the official name of element 106. More information concerning the international union's role in this issue can be found in the Societies, Committees, and Events series. The Speeches and Writings series contain drafts of Seaborg's numerous speeches, articles, books, encyclopedia and atlas entries, and introductions, forewords, and prefaces. His speeches and articles focus particularly on his scientific research, peaceful uses of atomic energy, arms control, the history of nuclear science, education, and the environment. His books chronicle his scientific work, his chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission, and his chancellorship of the University Papers of Glenn Theodore Seaborg 7
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[finding aid]. - American Memory - Library of Congress

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