John Gofman

Research John Gofman graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's in chemistry in 1939, and received a doctorate in nuclear and physical chemistry from Berkeley in 1943, where he worked as a graduate student under Glenn T. Seaborg. In his PhD dissertation, Gofman described the discovery of radioisotopes protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233, as well as uranium-233 and the characterization of its fissionability.

Three months after the Chernobyl disaster, Gofman predicted that Chernobyl would cause "475,000 fatal cancers plus about an equal number of additional non-fatal cases, occurring over time both inside and outside the ex-Soviet Union".

Birth and death

Gofman was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Jewish parents, David and Sarah Gofman, who immigrated to the US from the Russian Empire in about 1905. Gofman died of heart failure at age 88 on August 15, 2007, in his home in San Francisco.