Darleane Hoffman, contributed to the confirmation of the existence of the Seaborg chemical element

Darleane Christian Hoffman was born in the small town of Terril, Iowa (USA), on 8 November 1926.

As a freshman at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University), she attended a required chemistry course taught by Nellie May de Naylor and decided to pursue further study in the field. She received her B.S. in 1948 and her Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry in 1951 from Iowa State University.

She spent a year as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and then moved to work with her husband at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, where she began as a staff member in 1953.

In 1979 she became head of the isotope and nuclear chemistry division.

In 1984, she resigned from Los Alamos and accepted a position as a full professor in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and became head of the Nuclear Heavy Element and Radiochemistry Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

She also helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She became its first director and served in that position until 1996 when she "retired" to become Senior Advisor and Charter Director.