Darleane C. Hoffman


Darleane Christian Hoffman was an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of seaborgium, element 106. She was a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.

Early life and education

Darleane Christian was born on November 8, 1926, at home in the small town of Terril, Iowa, and was the daughter of Carl B. and Elverna Clute Christian. Her father was a mathematics teacher and superintendent of schools; her mother wrote and directed plays.
When she was a freshman in college at Iowa State College, she took a required chemistry course taught by Nellie May Naylor, and decided to pursue further study in that field. She received her B. S. and Ph. D. degrees in chemistry from Iowa State University.

Career

Darleane C. Hoffman was a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a year and then joined her husband at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory where—after an extensive delay where she was denied access to the laboratory because the human resources department refused to believe that a woman could be a chemist—she began as a staff member in 1953. She became Division Leader of the Chemistry and Nuclear Chemistry Division in 1979. She left Los Alamos in 1984 to accept appointments as tenured professor in the department of chemistry at UC Berkeley and Leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear & Radiochemistry Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Additionally, she helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1991 and became its first director, serving until 1996 when she "retired" to become Senior Advisor and Charter Director.
Over her career, Hoffman studied the chemical and nuclear properties of transuranium elements and confirmed the existence of seaborgium.

Personal life and death

Right after finishing her doctoral work, Darleane Christian married Marvin M. Hoffman, a physicist. He died in 2019. The Hoffmans had two children, Maureane Hoffman, M.D., Ph.D and Dr. Daryl Hoffman, both born at Los Alamos.
Darleane Hoffman died in Menlo Park, California on September 4, 2025, at the age of 98.

Awards and memberships

She was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.