Street to Be Named for Nobel-Winning Chemist

The city plans to dedicate a street next week to its most famous former resident, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg.

Seaborg--who won the Nobel Prize in 1951 for discovering the radioactive element plutonium--lived in South Gate as a youngster, attending school in Watts before enrolling at UCLA.

Seaborg was the first scientist to head the Atomic Energy Commission. He was also chancellor of UC Berkeley and co-founder of the Pacific 10 athletic conference. His achievements were so diverse that he was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest entry in Who’s Who.

Seaborg played a key role in the World War II Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb, by developing the technique that was used to isolate and purify the plutonium required for the bomb. But he also campaigned for the peaceful use of atomic energy and against the testing of nuclear weapons.

The noted scientist died in February at the age of 86.

On Tuesday, South Gate city officials plan to rename Library Place, a street that runs between City Hall and the city’s museum, as Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg Way. The museum already displays several of the journals Seaborg kept as a youth.