(KINGSVILLE, March 22, 1996) -- University of California, Berkeley Professor of Chemistry Darleane C. Hoffman will give the 16th Annual Garland Lecture at Texas A&M University - Kingsville at 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 2, in the Nierman Hall room 251.

Hoffman will discuss elements that have no known existence in nature, but, which are currently being made by humans (synthetic elements). Her presentation of "One-Atom-At-A-Time Chemistry of the Heaviest Elements" will explain how these man-made elements are being created and how they interact with other chemical substances.

Hoffman, a native Iowan, received her Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from Iowa State University and was leader of the isotope and nuclear chemistry division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1953 to 1984. She joined UC, Berkeley as chemistry professor and leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1984. She was the discoverer of 244Pu in nature, as well as the first observer of enhanced symmetric mass division in spontaneous fission inside heavy fermium isotopes and was elected in 1990 to membership in the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters

The annual Garland Lecture honors the late Fred McKee Garland, who taught chemistry at the university from 1946 until 1978, and who chaired the department for 25 years.

The lecture by Hoffman is open to the public at no charge. During the event, the student recipient of the Fred M. Garland Award, a scholarship, will be announced.

-TAMUK- -Mary Daniel