ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: Albert Ghiorso co-discovered 12 chemical elements, more than anyone in history. He died in December at the age of 95. His memorial service was last weekend in Berkeley, California.</s>ROBERT SCHMIEDER: The reason he was legendary is because he seemed to be able to do magic things that other people couldn't do.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: That's fellow physicist Robert Schmieder. He knew Albert Ghiorso for 40 years.</s>ROBERT SCHMIEDER: When you would talk with Albert, you were acutely aware that he was extraordinarily focused on the subject and his mind was extremely quick.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: Ghiorso never got an advanced degree, no doctorate, just a bachelor's in electrical engineering. During the Second World War, he worked on the Manhattan Project.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: It was then that Ghiorso helped discover the first of his 12 elements: americium and curium. After the war, Ghiorso returned to Berkeley, where he co- discovered two more elements and took the opportunity to pay homage to his hometown.</s>ROBERT SCHMIEDER: And those were named berkelium and californium.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: Albert Ghiorso developed new instruments and new techniques to help discover new elements not found in nature. Rounding out the list are einsteinium, fermium.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: Mendelevium, nobelium.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: Lawrencium, rutherfordium.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: Dubnium and seaborgium.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: Albert Ghiorso died last month at the age of 95. That's also the atomic number of the first new element he helped discover.
Hosts Robert Siegel and Melissa Block remember Albert Ghiorso, an ingenious and inventive scientist who helped discover 12 chemical elements — an accomplishment perhaps unrivaled in the history of atomic research. Ghiorso, 95, died of undisclosed causes last month at a care facility near his home in Berkeley, Calif.