Seaborg's visit kicked off MTU's inaugural Melvin Calvin Nobel Laureate Lecture Series, which honors the distinguished alumnus. Calvin graduated from MTU in 1931 with a BS in Chemistry and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961 for his work in photosynthesis. He died in January 1997 in Berkeley. Calvin and Seaborg were colleagues and lifelong friends. In his address at MTU, Seaborg stressed the importance of applying human values to scientific research, with a caveat.
Conflict is inevitable.
When asked how he felt about research in human cloning, he stood by his principles. Society has the right to control the applications of the research, but the information garnered could be of great value to the human race. In any case, to ban all research in the US will simply move the scientists offshore. Seaborg received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951, along with his colleague Edwin McMillian, for discoveries of plutonium and other transuranium elements. But he was not surprised.