Biography
Of Swedish, distant German and Belgian (Flemish and Walloon) ancestry, Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, Michigan, the son of Herman Theodore (Ted) and Selma Olivia Erickson Seaborg. He had one sister, Jeanette. When Glenn Seaborg was a boy, the family moved to the Seaborg Home in a subdivision called Home Gardens, that was later annexed to the City of South Gate, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.
He kept a daily journal from 1927 until he suffered a stroke in 1998. As a youth, Seaborg was both a devoted sports fan and an avid movie buff. His mother encouraged him to become a book-keeper as she felt his literary interests were impractical. He did not take an interest in science until his junior year when he was inspired by Dwight Logan Reid, a chemistry and physics teacher at David Starr Jordan High School in Watts.
He graduated from Jordan in 1929 at the top of his class and received a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1933. While at UCLA, he was invited by his German professor to meet Albert Einstein, an experience that had a profound impact on Seaborg and served as a model of graciousness for his encounters with aspiring students in later years. Seaborg worked his way through school as a stevedore (longshoreman), fruit packer and laboratory assistant.
Read more about this topic: Glenn T. Seaborg
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