This is an account of the element Plutonium written by an eminent European journalist.

Discovery has a value of its own: it pushes back the frontiers of what we know. Throughout time, physicists, chemists and mathematicians have collaborated in producing theories of how this physical world works. Much of the time, progress is slow and occasionally, when a Mendeleev or an Einstein appears, great strides are made because it suddenly becomes clear how the jigsaw is fitting together. The last century made great progress.

Glenn Seaborg was a chemist and had spent his life working on the edge of what we know: doing experiments and trying to interpret the results along with colleagues in other laboratories and in other countries. In this case, the experiments had to do with matter, atomic matter, and what existed in very small amounts and for very short times. In 1941, Glenn was a member of a team in Berkeley, California, that discovered the 94th element. They called it ‘Plutonium.’ Since then more elements have been discovered and Nobel Laureate Seaborg is now immortalized since the 106th element is named ‘Seaborgium.’

These scientists were brilliant in their investigations but sometimes it takes another skill to explain their work. Plutonium is associated with the awful power of the hydrogen bomb but it is also used to generate electricity through nuclear power. The public needs to be able to differentiate between these.

Hermann Henderickx has spent considerable time and effort in the wonderful and exciting world of nuclear science. He knows what he is talking about and he can make the public understand … something that many scientists have failed to do. Henderickx lays out the myths and the facts clearly before you. Glenn Seaborg read the book but died before he could provide the foreword. John Graham, a former President of the American Nuclear Society, substituted for him by providing the existing foreword.

“Plutonium -- a blessing or a curse?” Hermann V. Henderickx, (translated by Emmy Roos), The Copper Beech Publishing, Brussels and Denver, CO., USA, 1999

ISBN: 2-930221-08-9 (Trade paperback)

Direct from The Copper Beech: $23.00 Purchase from : John Graham