Who is Lloyd Albert Quarterman?

Answer 1

"We are in an age of discovery.... We live in the world of the unknown. That's the only place to live." That quote, taken from the Ivan Van Sertima interview with Lloyd Albert Quarterman in 1979 for the book Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, makes a strong and accurate statement regarding the way this African-American chemist saw the world. Lloyd Albert Quarterman was born in Philadelphia in 1918, and after graduation from St. Augustines in Raleigh, North Carolina, he went to work for the War Department. It was 1943, and he was picked to assist on the Manhattan Project, which was concerned with the refining of fissile materials and with desiging and building a nuclear weapon. His initial assignment was at Columbia University in New York, and later he was moved to the University of Chicago. Quarterman worked side-by-side with none other than Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein, and had a hand in the chemistry that floridates uranium so it can be processed. It was necessary to separate the lighter 235U isotope, which was needed for the bomb, from the 238U isotope, which comprises over 99% of natural uranium. He received a commendation for his work from the War Department after the end of hostilities. Following the war, Quarterman went to work in the newly formed Argonne National Laboratories, which were created from the facilities located at and run by the University of Chicago for the Manhattan Project. He was conducting research on fluorine, and he was able to get fluorine, which is the most chemically reactive of all the elements, to combine with some of the inert gases. The inert or noble gases, you will recall, are extremely resistant to any kind of chemical bonding. They are generally said to not bond with anything, and that's because they have full outer electron shells, which are the so-called valence shells. He was able to get argon, krypton and xenon to react with fluorine, which is quite a feat. Later in his career, he specialized in spectroscopic analysis, and was instrumental in advancing the spectroscope by coming up with a diamond window through which to make observations of extremely reactive chemicals and compounds like - you guessed it - fluorine. He eventually got a master of science degree from Northwestern in 1952, and later on was awarded an honorary doctorate for his many years of research. Part of his later investigation centered on finding a synthetic substitute for blood, which would literally have been a life saver. He was an active memeber of the NAACP and often made presentations to young black people to prod them into chosing science as a course of study and as a career. The nice people at Answers dot com have a wonderful post on this dedicated man of science, and a link to that post is provided below.