CME INDIA Presentation by ⚜ Dr. M. Gowri Sankar, MD, Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of General Medicine, Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore.
Today’s History Feature:
Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg
(Apr 19, 1912 – Feb 25, 1998)
💠American Nuclear Chemist
💠Founding Father of Nuclear Medicine
His contributions…
🔸Seaborg was very much inspired by his chemistry teacher, when he was young. Thereby, he became interested in chemistry.
🔸Seaborg began his carrier at the University of California, as a nuclear chemist and discovered around 10 radioactive elements such as plutonium, cerium, nobelium… thus, he created an actinide series in the Mendeleev’s Periodic Tables of Elements.
🔸In fact, his assignments in investigating isotopes greatly contributed to the discovery of more than 100 isotopes of elements.
🔸Subsequently, Seaborg’s elements were being used in the field of medicine and he became a pioneer in nuclear medicine.
🔸His radioactive isotopes utilized in the field of medicine are…
🔹 Iron-59, used to study haemoglobin in human blood.
🔹 Iodine-131, used to treat thyroid diseases (Successfully used personally to prolong the life of his mother who suffered from thyroid disease).
🔹 Cobalt – 60, used as a radiation source for medical radiotherapy.
🔹 Cobalt – 60 Teletherapy machine to treat cancer.
🔹 Technetium-99m, which is a diagnostic radioisotope used widely in…
🔅Tc 99m Sestamibi scans
🔅Tc 99m MAG
🔅SPECT
🔅Bone scans
🔅Cardiac Ventriculography
🔅Immunoscintigraphy
🔅Blood pool labelling…
🔸His ground breaking discovery of 10 transuranium elements led him to receive the most prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 at the age of 39 years.
🔸Conferred as an honour, his element Seaborgium was released in his name in the year 1997. That was the first time, the element was labelled with its scientist’s name (for a living person).
🔸Moreover, Dr. Seaborg advised around ten Presidents of United States from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton on nuclear policy.
🔸Dr. Seaborg was actually living with the principle of “There is a Beauty in Discovery.”
A Day to Commemorate…
A True Giant of the 20th Century
Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg 🙏🏼
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