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Maryland chemist wins national award for radioisotope studies

Chemist William B. Walters of College Park, Md., will be honored April 3 by the world's largest scientific society for his insights into the nuclei of radioactive compounds, some of which astronomers can use to study supernovas, for example. He will receive the 2001 Award for Nuclear Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its 221st national meeting in San Diego.

"What I've done for 37 years is study the decay of radioactive nuclei to learn about their shapes," said Walters, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland, College Park. "We've learned they come in all kinds of shapes - round, football-shaped, doorknob-shaped, pear-shaped."

By making radioactive forms of elements in the laboratory and tracking their decay, Walters' research group detects the patterns of energy the radioisotopes give off. The energy profile is directly related to shape.

For example, he and his team have shot protons at uranium nuclei, which breaks up the uranium into a variety of other radioisotopes. Walters was most interested in radioactive tin, one of perhaps every billion nuclei produced.

"So we first have to separate the tin isotopes out from the mix," he explained. "We do that with a triple laser setup, a combination which will ionize only tin. Then we pass the tin nuclei through a magnetic field and ultimately separate the tin-135."

Tin-135 is one substance created during supernova, so astrophysicists use his data to uncover the process by which a large, dying star explodes, Walters said.

His field "is a wonderful arena in which to train students," asserted Walters. "My graduate students have gone on to do almost everything under the sun. One works for the EPA, another is an FBI agent, another is a medical researcher," he said. One of his former students even analyzes art at a museum.

The nuclear chemist received his undergraduate degree from Kansas State University in 1960 and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1964. He is a member of the ACS division of nuclear chemistry and technology.

The ACS Award for Nuclear Chemistry is sponsored by the Gordon and Breach Publishing Group.

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