Donald Delbert Clayton

astrophysicist whose most visible achievement was prediction on nucleosynthesis grounds that supernovae are intensely radioactive. For the many significant consequences of that discovery, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1992) for “theoretical astrophysics related to the formation of (chemical) elements in the explosions of stars and to the observable products of these explosions”. Supernovae became the most important stellar events in astronomy owing to their profoundly radioactive nature.

 Research centers on nuclear astrophysics, applying nuclear physics to the thermonuclear origin of the chemical elements in stars, beginning with formulations 55 years ago of the synthesis of heavy elements by the capture of free neutrons in stellar interiors and of iron-group elements in supernova explosions.  More recent science disciplines induced by his work were gamma-ray line astronomy of radioactivity in young supernova remnants (Co-Investigator on one of the four instruments on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, 1991-2000) and the isotopic analysis of solid stardust grains from meteorites (Leonard Medal of the Meteoritical Society 1991).

Currently 81 years old Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Clemson University.