Frank Harold Spedding (22 October 1902 – 15
December 1984) was a Canadian American chemist.
He was a renowned expert on rare earth elements,
and on extraction of metals from minerals.
The uranium extraction process helped make
it possible for the Manhattan Project to build
the first atomic bombs.
A graduate of the University of Michigan and
University of California, Berkeley, Spedding
became an assistant professor and head of
the department of physical chemistry at Iowa
State College in 1937. His efforts at building
up the school were so successful that he would
spend the rest of his career there, becoming
a professor of chemistry in 1941, a professor
of physics in 1950, a professor of metallurgy
in 1962, and ultimately professor emeritus
in 1973. He co-founded, along with Dr. Harley
Wilhelm, the Institute for Atomic Research
and the Ames Laboratory of the Atomic Energy
Commission, and directed the Ames Laboratory
from its founding in 1947 until 1968.
Spedding developed an ion exchange method
of separating and purifying rare earth elements
using ion exchange resins, and later used
ion exchange to separate isotopes of individual
elements, including hundreds of grams of almost
pure nitrogen-15. He published over 250 peer-reviewed
papers, and held 22 patents in his own name
and jointly with others. Some 88 students
received their Ph.D. degree under his supervision.
== Early life and education ==
Spedding was born on 22 October 1902, in Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada, the son of Howard Leslie
Spedding and Mary Ann Elizabeth (Marshall)
Spedding. Soon after he was born, the family
moved to Michigan, and then Chicago. He became
a naturalized U.S. citizen through his father.
The family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where
his father worked as a photographer, in 1918.
He entered the University of Michigan in 1920,
receiving a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree
in chemical engineering in 1925 and a Master
of Science (M.S.) in analytical chemistry
the following year.As an undergraduate, Spedding
took issue with the prevailing explanation
by Friedrich August Kekulé of how the six
carbon atoms in benzene hold together and
proposed an alternate explanation. His professor,
Moses Gomberg, recognised this as being the
same as the (incorrect) model advanced by
Albert Ladenburg in 1869. At Gomberg's suggestion,
Spedding applied to the University of California,
Berkeley, to study for his doctorate under
Gilbert N. Lewis. Gomberg wrote a recommendation
so that Spedding was not only accepted, but
given a teaching fellowship as well. Under
Lewis's supervision, Spedding earned his Doctor
of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in 1929, writing his
thesis on "Line absorption spectra in solids
at low temperatures in the visible and ultraviolet
regions of the spectrum". It was published
that year in the Physical Review.
== Early career ==
Spedding's graduation coincided with the onset
of the Great Depression, and jobs became hard
to find. Spedding received a National Research
Fellowship from 1930 to 1932, enabling him
to stay at Berkeley and continue his research
into the spectra of solids. While hiking in
northern California, he met Ethel Annie MacFarlane,
who shared his passion for camping, hiking
and mountain climbing. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba,
she was a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan
and the University of Toronto, where she had
earned a master's degree in history. When
they met, she was teaching at Victoria High
School in Victoria, British Columbia. They
were married on 21 June 1931. They had a daughter,
Mary Anne Elizabeth, who was born in 1939.From
1932 to 1934, Spedding worked for Lewis as
a chemistry instructor. Around this time,
he became interested in the chemistry of the
rare earths. These were expensive and hard
to find, and generally available only in minute
amounts. In 1933 he won the Irving Langmuir
Award for most outstanding young chemist.
The award came with a cash prize of $1,000.
He borrowed money to travel to Chicago to
collect it. While he was there, he was approached
by a man offering several pounds of europium
and samarium. His benefactor was Herbert Newby
McCoy, a retired chemistry professor from
the University of Chicago, who had obtained
a supply of these elements from the Lindsay
Light and Chemical Company, where they were
a byproduct of thorium production. A few weeks
later, Spedding received a package in the
mail containing jars of the metals.In 1934,
Spedding was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship,
allowing him to study in Europe. To save money,
Spedding and his wife travelled to Europe
by heading westward across the Pacific. His
intention was to study in Germany under James
Franck and Francis Simon, but they fled Germany
after Adolf Hitler came to power in March
1933. Instead he went to the Cavendish Laboratory
at the University of Cambridge in England,
where he was welcomed by Ralph H. Fowler.
Spedding worked with John Lennard-Jones, and
attended lectures given by Max Born. He paid
a visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, and gave
a lecture in Leningrad.When Spedding returned
to the United States in 1935, the country
was still in the grip of the Great Depression,
and the job market had not improved. He was
George Fisher Baker assistant professor at
Cornell University from 1935 to 1937. It was
another temporary position, but it did allow
him to work with Hans Bethe. At one point
he drove out to Ohio State University hoping
to find a tenure track position. The position
had already been filled, but the professor
of chemistry there, W. L. Evans, knew that
Winfred F. (Buck) Coover at Iowa State College
in Ames, Iowa, had a position. "I wouldn't
normally have chosen the place," Spedding
later recalled, "but I was desperate. I thought:
I can go there and build up physical chemistry
and when jobs really open up I can go to another
school."Spedding took up the position as assistant
professor and head of the department of physical
chemistry at Iowa State College in 1937. His
efforts at building up the school were so
successful that he would spend the rest of
his career there, becoming a professor of
chemistry in 1941, a professor of physics
in 1950, a professor of metallurgy in 1962,
and ultimately professor emeritus in 1973.
== Manhattan Project ==
By February 1942, the United States had entered
World War II, and the Manhattan Project was
building up. At the University of Chicago,
Arthur H. Compton established its Metallurgical
Laboratory. Its mission was to build nuclear
reactors to create plutonium that would be
used in atomic bombs. For advice on assembling
the laboratory's Chemistry Division, Compton,
a physicist, turned to Herbert McCoy, who
had considerable experience with isotopes
and radioactive elements. McCoy recommended
Spedding as an expert on the rare earth elements,
which were chemically similar to the actinide
series that included uranium and plutonium.
Compton asked Spedding to become the head
of the Metallurgical Laboratory's Chemistry
Division.Due to lack of space at the University
of Chicago, Spedding proposed to organise
part of the Chemistry Division at Iowa State
College in Ames, where he had colleagues who
were willing to help. It was agreed that Spedding
would spend half of each week in Ames, and
half in Chicago. The first problem on the
agenda was to find uranium for the nuclear
reactor that Enrico Fermi was proposing to
build. The only uranium metal available commercially
was produced by the Westinghouse Electric
and Manufacturing Company, using a photochemical
process that produced ingots the size of a
quarter that were sold for around $20 per
gram. Edward Creutz, the head of the group
responsible for fabricating the uranium, wanted
a metal sphere the size of an orange for his
experiments. With Westinghouse's process,
it would have cost $200,000 and taken a year
to produce.The other major problem was the
purity of the uranium. Impurities could act
as neutron poisons and prevent a nuclear reactor
from working, but the uranium oxide that Fermi
wanted for his experimental reactor contained
unacceptably large amounts of impurities.
As a result, references published before 1942
typically listed its melting point at around
1,800 °C (3,270 °F) when pure uranium metal
actually melts at 1,132 °C (2,070 °F). The
most effective way to purify uranium oxide
in the laboratory was to take advantage of
the fact that uranium nitrate is soluble in
ether. Scaling this process up for industrial
production was a dangerous proposition; ether
was explosive, and a factory using large quantities
was likely to blow up or burn down. Compton
and Spedding turned to Mallinckrodt in Saint
Louis, Missouri, which had experience with
ether. Spedding went over the details with
Mallinckrodt's chemical engineers, Henry V.
Farr and John R. Ruhoff, on 17 April 1942.
Within a few months, sixty tons of highly
pure uranium oxide was produced.Spedding recruited
two chemistry professors at Ames for his group
there, Harley Wilhelm and I. B. Johns. Spedding
and Wilhelm began looking for ways to create
the uranium metal. At the time, it was produced
in the form of a powder, and was highly pyrophoric.
It could be pressed and sintered and stored
in cans, but to be useful, it needed to be
melted and cast. The Ames team found that
molten uranium could be cast in a graphite
container. Although graphite was known to
react with uranium, this could be managed
because the carbide formed only where the
two touched.To produce uranium metal, they
tried reducing uranium oxide with hydrogen,
but this did not work. They then investigated
a process (now known as the Ames process)
originally developed by J. C. Goggins and
others at the University of New Hampshire
in 1926. This involved mixing uranium tetrachloride
and calcium metal in a calcium oxide-lined
steel pressure vessel (known as a "bomb")
and heating it. They were able to reproduce
Goggin's results in August 1942, and by September,
the Ames Project had produced a 4.980-kilogram
(10.98 lb) ingot. Starting in July 1943, Mallinckrodt,
Union Carbide, and DuPont began producing
uranium by the Ames process, and Ames phased
out its own production by early 1945. As a
result, the Ames Laboratory never moved to
Chicago, but Spedding was present at the University
of Chicago on 2 December 1942, to witness
the first controlled nuclear chain reaction
in Fermi's Chicago Pile-1.Throughout the war,
the laboratory held regular information sessions
known as "Speddinars". In addition to its
work with uranium, the Ames Laboratory produced
437 pounds (198 kg) of extremely pure cerium
for the cerium sulphide crucibles used by
the plutonium metallurgists. Fears that world
supplies of uranium were limited led to experiments
with thorium, which could be irradiated to
produce fissile uranium-233. A calcium reduction
process was developed for thorium, and some
4,500 pounds (2,000 kg) was produced.
== Later life ==
After World War II, Spedding founded the Institute
for Atomic Research and the Ames Laboratory
of the Atomic Energy Commission. He directed
the Ames Laboratory from its founding in 1947
until 1968. It was initially established on
the grounds of Iowa State College. Permanent
buildings were constructed that were opened
in 1948 and 1950, and subsequently named Wilhelm
Hall and Spedding Hall. Spedding was "universally
acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost
experts on the identification and separation
of rare earths". He developed an ion exchange
method of separating and purifying rare earth
elements using ion exchange resins. He later
used ion exchange to separate isotopes of
individual elements, including hundreds of
grams of almost pure nitrogen-15.During his
career, Spedding published over 260 peer-reviewed
papers, and held 22 patents in his own name
and jointly with others. Some 88 students
received their Ph.D. degree under his supervision.
After his retirement in 1972, he authored
60 books. He received the William H. Nichols
Award from the American Chemical Society in
1952, the James Douglas Gold Medal from the
American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical,
and Petroleum Engineers in 1961 and the Francis
J. Clamer Medal from the Franklin Institute
in 1969. He was nominated several times for
the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but never won.
An award called the Frank H. Spedding Award
is presented at the annual Rare Earth Research
Conference.Spedding suffered a stroke in November
1984, and was hospitalised, but sent home.
He died suddenly on 15 December 1984, and
was buried in the cemetery at Iowa State University.
He was survived by his wife, daughter, and
three grandchildren. His papers are housed
in the Special Collections Department of Iowa
State University.
== Notes ==
== References ==
Atomic Heritage Foundation. Frank Spedding.
Profiles, Manhattan Project Veterans Database.
Compton, Arthur (1956). Atomic Quest. New
York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 173307.
Corbett, John D. (2001). "Frank Harold Spedding
1902–1982". Biographical Memoirs National
Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences.
80. ISBN 978-0-309-08281-5. Retrieved 6 June
2015.
Hewlett, Richard G.; Anderson, Oscar E. (1962).
The New World, 1939–1946 (PDF). University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
ISBN 0-520-07186-7. OCLC 637004643. Retrieved
26 March 2013.
Payne, Carolyn Stilts (1992). The Ames Project:
Administering classified research as a part
of the Manhattan Project at Iowa State College,
1942-1945 (PhD thesis). Iowa State University.
Paper 10338. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
== External links ==
History of Ames Laboratory at the Wayback
Machine (archived 27 May 2010)
History of Ames Laboratory (video)
