The Cal 100: No. 82 -- Glenn Seaborg

Seaborg won a Nobel Prize and also helped overhaul the conference that eventually became the Pac-12

We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.

No. 82: Glenn Seaborg

Cal Sports Connection: He was Cal’s faculty representative to the Pacific Coast Conference (which became the Pac-12) and uncovered recruiting violations that led to the overhaul of the conference.

Claim to Fame: He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of plutonium, and advised U.S. Presidents on nuclear policy.

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Wrap your head around this: The man who discovered plutonium had a major impact on West Coast college sports.

Dr. Glenn Seaborg was a Renaissance man. Not only did he share the 1951 Nobel prize for Chemistry for his discovery of plutonium, but as Cal’s faculty representative to the Pacific Coast Conference, he helped overhaul of the conference.

And, by the way, he was Cal’s chancellor from 1958 to 1961, and is it mere coincidence that Cal won its only basketball national championship (1959) and made its most recent Rose Bowl appearance (1959) while he was the head of the Cal campus?

Seaborg later wrote: “Berkeley proved it was possible to combine athletic and academic excellence.”

Glenn Seaborg. Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Seaborg earned his Ph.D at Cal, and he loved sports, often playing with his kids in the backyard or setting up vast hiking trails in the East Bay hills.

He was a member of Cal’s faculty and was appointed Cal’s faculty representative to the PCC in 1952, serving as a spokesman for the conference and a delegate to the NCAA. In that role he discovered widespread recruiting violations within the PCC and spearheaded the move to clean things up. It led to the breakup of the nine-school PCC and the 1959 formation of the Athletic Association of Western University, a five-school conference (Cal, Stanford, Washington, USC, UCLA) that eventually became the Pac-8, then the Pac-10 and now the Pac-12.

As well as serving as a professor and chancellor at Cal, Seaborg advised 10 U.S. Presidents on nuclear policy, and he was the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971. He was an advocate for arms control and was a major contributor to the Franck Report, which led to several treaties limiting or banning nuclear bomb testing.

Besides plutonium, Seaborg discovered (or co-discovered) nine other elements, and you will note the reference to Cal and to Seaborg in the names of several of them: berkelium, californium, seaborgium, nobelium, americium, curium, einsteinium, fermium and mendelevium.

He died in 1999 at the age of 86 as a result of complications of a stroke he had while exercising on a flight of stairs at a scientific meeting.

The Cal 100: No. 83 Alysia Johnson Montano

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Cover photo of Glenn Seaborg courtesy of Cal Athletics

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