Dawn Shaughnessy and her team at the Heavy Element group are working to make chemistry class even harder. There is no element named after her (yet), but Dawn Shaughnessy—a relatively young chemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—is one of the more prolific researchers in the small world of scientists who seek to create entirely new entries to the periodic table that most of us learned about in grade school. The team she leads, the Heavy Element Group, was part of the discovery of three out of the four new elements announced last week in collaboration with researchers in Russia and Tennessee. In total, she’s helped discover 6 of the 26 new elements added since 1940 (one, Livermorium, was named after her lab). In an AMA on Reddit, she talked about how she became a scientist and where some of the current limits of science need to be stretched in order for new discoveries to continue in her field. Shaughnessy once wanted to become a doctor or surgeon, but by the time she got to middle school, she became interested in science. By high school, she realized chemistry was her calling. She hopes more kids consider her path: “I think that […]
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