Flashback February 2005

Announcement of the transformation of graphite to diamond at General Electric Laboratories, US. Two years earlier diamonds had been synthesised in Stockholm, Sweden, but this work was not published. General Electric went on to become the largest producer of synthetic diamond.

Mendelevium first identified through bombardment of isotope ²⁵³Es with helium in the Berkeley 60-inch cyclotron. Mendelevium is named after Dmitri Mendeleev, father of the periodic table.

William Joseph Sparks born Indiana, US. Sparks became the first appointed scientific advisor at the Exxon Research and Engineering Company. Sparks is best remembered for his work on butyl rubber.

Ulf Svante von Euler born, Stockholm. His father received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1929 and his grandfather discovered thulium and holmium. Ulf received the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1970 for his identification of noradrenaline as a neurotransmitter.

Arthur Becket Lamb born Massachusetts, US. Lamb undertook military research at the Chemical Warfare Service established after the outbreak of World War I. In 1917 he was appointed editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. After the war Lamb returned to Harvard, becoming Dean in 1940. 

Sallie Robbins