Dr. Darleane (Christian) Hoffman

Professor (Emerita) University of California, Berkeley

Darleane C. Hoffman is currently professor (emerita) of the graduate school in the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley (UCB), and faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Her research interests include rapid chemical separation of short-lived fission products; separations chemistry of lanthanide, actinide, and transactinide elements; search for heavy elements in nature; studies of radionuclide migration in geologic media; studies of the spontaneous fission process; heavy-ion reactions and production of new neutron-rich heavy-element isotopes; and atom-at-a-time studies of the chemical and nuclear properties of the heaviest elements.

Dr. Hoffman received her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. She served as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for two years and then joined Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1953. She spent sabbatical years as a National Science Foundation senior postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Atomic Energy, Kjeller, Norway, and as a Guggenheim fellow at LBNL in 1978-79. She returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to be division leader of the Chemistry-Nuclear Chemistry Division from 1979-81 and later the Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division from 1982-84.

In 1984, Dr. Hoffman joined the Department of Chemistry at UCB as full professor (nuclear chemistry) and leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group at LBNL. She helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNLL) in 1991, and served as its first director and thereafter as senior adviser and charter director. Professor Hoffman is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemists, the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.

She has held visiting lectureships in the United States and abroad and was awarded honorary doctorates from Clark University, U. S., and Bern University, Switzerland. She was the first woman to receive the American Chemical Society Award for Nuclear Chemistry, 1983; the Garvan-Olin Medal in 1990; and the Priestley Medal 2000. Other honors include: the U.S. National Medal of Science 1997; the Sigma Xi Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement 2003; the Radiochemistry Society Lifetime Achievement Award 2004; the John V. Atanasoff Research and Discovery Award 2007 from Iowa State University; the Hevesy Medal 2010. She has served on several boards and committees for the National Research Council, including the Board on Radioactive Waste Management, and most recently (2008-2010) the Committee to Assess U. S. Nuclear Forensics Capabilities. She has served on many review committees and advisory committees for the U. S. Department of Energy.