Carol Alonso

Carol Alonso
Born Carol Travis Alonso
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Bryn Mawr College (BS)
Known for Seaborgium
Scientific career
Institutions Yale University
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Thesis Measurements of nuclear quadrupole moments (1970)
Doctoral advisor Lee Grodzins

Carol Travis Alonso is an American physicist who worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was involved in the discovery of seaborgium. She won a bronze medal from the United States Dressage Federation in 2009.

Early life and education

Alonso was born and raised in Canada.[1] She studied biophysics at Bryn Mawr College. She joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her doctoral studies, completing her PhD thesis Perturbed Angular Correlations in 1970[2] supervised by Lee Grodzins.[3]

Research

Alonso joined Yale University as a postdoctoral fellow, working with Glenn T. Seaborg.[3][4] She spent two years at Yale University before joining Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There was immense rivalry between Russian scientists in Dubna and the group in Berkeley.[5] Alonso was attending a conference in Tennessee to present a nuclear hydrodynamics paper and caught in the middle of a competition to first announce the discovery of seaborgium, where she was the only woman.[5] They used californium-249 as a target and eventually discovered seaborgium.[5] They had a series of Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC) punch parties to celebrate, and everyone was given hats and paperweights.[5][6] They found the new nuclei had a 0.9 second half-life and underwent alpha decay to rutherfordium-259.[7]

She developed the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program.[8] She contributed to government policy on the role of nuclear testing.[9] She looked at the role of the University of California United States Department of Energy laboratories.[10] She developed a hydrodynamic computer code to simulate charged nuclear drops.[11] In 1975 she took part in the Sonoma State University What Physicists Do series.[12] She worked on nuclear defense policy for 26 years.[1]

She retired from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011.[13] Today, Alonso is a donor to a fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[14][15]

References

  1. 1 2 "Poem of the Month". Blazing Lantern Book Publishing. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  2. ↑ Alonso, Carol Travis; Grodzins, Lee (1972-03-01). "Theoretical Aspects of Quadrupole Perturbations of Time-Integrated Angular Correlations". Physical Review C. 5 (3): 728–738. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.5.728.
  3. 1 2 "Alumni/ae Notes" (PDF). MIT. 2016. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  4. ↑ "Actinide Research Quarterly" (PDF). LLNL. 2009. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Albert, Ghiorso; C, Hoffman Darleane; T, Seaborg Glenn (2000-01-21). Transuranium People, The: The Inside Story. World Scientific. ISBN 9781783262441.
  6. ↑ Vermeij, Geerat J. (1991-03-15). "Patterns of Change". Science. 251 (4999): 1374–1375. doi:10.1126/science.251.4999.1374-a. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17816196.
  7. ↑ Istvan, Hargittai; Magdolna, Hargittai (2003-03-21). Candid Science Iii: More Conversations With Famous Chemists. World Scientific. ISBN 9781783261116.
  8. ↑ "Stockpile Stewardship". str.llnl.gov. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  9. ↑ Lawrence Livermore National and Sandia National Laboratories, Continued Operation: Environmental Impact Statement. 1992.
  10. ↑ Alonso, Carol (1987). "Report to Congress on Stockpile Reliability, Weapon Remanufacture, and the Role of Nuclear Testing". OSTI. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  11. ↑ Travis, Carol (1974). "The dynamics of colliding and oscillating drops" (PDF). Nasa. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  12. ↑ "What Physicists Do all past presentations". www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  13. ↑ "Selected pensions for University of California | Transparent California". transparentcalifornia.com. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  14. ↑ "MIT Department of Physics". web.mit.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  15. ↑ "MIT Department of Physics". web.mit.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
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