Edwin McMillan

American physicist (1907-1991)

  • Fame54.3
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia1.6K
Source-basedFalling
Lived 1907–1991, aged 84United States
  • Wikipedia
    62 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1907–1991
    Aged 84
  • Awards
    5
    recognised works
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08

He pushed past uranium on the periodic table, synthesizing neptunium in 1940 — the first element that didn't exist on Earth until someone built it in a lab.

Biography

About

Edwin Mattison McMillan graduated from Caltech and earned his doctorate from Princeton in 1933, then joined Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory where he discovered oxygen-15 and beryllium-10. In 1940 he produced neptunium, the first transuranium element, work that would earn him half of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Glenn Seaborg. World War II pulled him into microwave radar at MIT, sonar development for the Navy, and then the Manhattan Project in 1942, where he helped establish Los Alamos and led teams on the gun-type bomb design while contributing to the implosion weapon. After the…

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The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
54.3
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical22.1
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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Country rank
Category rank
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Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence