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Actinide

The actinide or actinoid  series encompasses at least the 14 metallic chemical elements in the 5f series, with atomic numbers from 89 to 102, actinium through nobelium. (Number 103, lawrencium, is sometimes also included despite being part of the 6d transition series.) The actinide series derives its name from the first element in the series, actinium. The informal chemical symbol An is used in general discussions of actinide chemistry to refer to any actinide.

The 1985 IUPAC Red Book recommends that actinoid be used rather than actinide, since the suffix -ide normally indicates a negative ion. However, owing to widespread current use, actinide is still allowed. Since actinoid literally means actinium-like (cf. humanoid or android), it has been argued for semantic reasons that actinium cannot logically be an actinoid, but IUPAC acknowledges its inclusion based on common usage.

All the actinides are f-block elements. Lawrencium is sometimes considered one as well, despite being a d-block element and a transition metal. The series mostly corresponds to the filling of the 5f electron shell, although as isolated atoms in the ground state many have anomalous configurations involving the filling of the 6d shell due to interelectronic repulsion. In comparison with the lanthanides, also mostly f-block elements, the actinides show much more variable valence. They all have very large atomic and ionic radii and exhibit an unusually large range of physical properties. While actinium and the late actinides (from curium onwards) behave similarly to the lanthanides, the elements thorium, protactinium, and uranium are much more similar to transition metals in their chemistry, with neptunium, plutonium, and americium occupying an intermediate position.

All actinides are radioactive and release energy upon radioactive decay; naturally occurring uranium and thorium, and synthetically produced plutonium are the most abundant actinides on Earth. These have been used in nuclear reactors, and uranium and plutonium are critical elements of nuclear weapons. Uranium and thorium also have diverse current or historical uses, and americium is used in the ionization chambers of most modern smoke detectors.

Of the actinides, primordial thorium and uranium occur naturally in substantial quantities. The radioactive decay of uranium produces transient amounts of actinium and protactinium, and atoms of neptunium and plutonium are occasionally produced from transmutation reactions in uranium ores. The other actinides are purely synthetic elements. Nuclear weapons tests have released at least six actinides heavier than plutonium into the environment; analysis of debris from a 1952 hydrogen bomb explosion showed the presence of americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium and fermium.

In presentations of the periodic table, the f-block elements are customarily shown as two additional rows below the main body of the table. This convention is entirely a matter of aesthetics and formatting practicality; a rarely used wide-formatted periodic table inserts the 4f and 5f series in their proper places, as parts of the table's sixth and seventh rows (periods).

 Actinides

Discovery, isolation and synthesis
Like the lanthanides, the actinides form a family of elements with similar properties. Within the actinides, there are two overlapping groups: transuranium elements, which follow uranium in the periodic table; and transplutonium elements, which follow plutonium. Compared to the lanthanides, which (except for promethium) are found in nature in appreciable quantities, most actinides are rare. Most do not occur in nature, and of those that do, only thorium and uranium do so in more than trace quantities. The most abundant or easily synthesized actinides are uranium and thorium, followed by plutonium, americium, actinium, protactinium, neptunium, and curium.

The existence of transuranium elements was suggested in 1934 by Enrico Fermi, based on his experiments. However, even though four actinides were known by that time, it was not yet understood that they formed a family similar to lanthanides. The prevailing view that dominated early research into transuranics was that they were regular elements in the 7th period, with thorium, protactinium and uranium corresponding to 6th-period hafnium, tantalum and tungsten, respectively. Synthesis of transuranics gradually undermined this point of view. By 1944, an observation that curium failed to exhibit oxidation states above 4 (whereas its supposed 6th period homolog, platinum, can reach oxidation state of 6) prompted Glenn Seaborg to formulate an "actinide hypothesis". Studies of known actinides and discoveries of further transuranic elements provided more data in support of this position, but the phrase "actinide hypothesis" (the implication being that a "hypothesis" is something that has not been decisively proven) remained in active use by scientists through the late 1950s.

At present, there are two major methods of producing isotopes of transplutonium elements: (1) irradiation of the lighter elements with neutrons; (2) irradiation with accelerated charged particles. The first method is more important for applications, as only neutron irradiation using nuclear reactors allows the production of sizeable amounts of synthetic actinides; however, it is limited to relatively light elements. The advantage of the second method is that elements heavier than plutonium, as well as neutron-deficient isotopes, can be obtained, which are not formed during neutron irradiation.

In 1962–1966, there were attempts in the United States to produce transplutonium isotopes using a series of six underground nuclear explosions. Small samples of rock were extracted from the blast area immediately after the test to study the explosion products, but no isotopes with mass number greater than 257 could be detected, despite predictions that such isotopes would have relatively long half-lives of α-decay. This non-observation was attributed to spontaneous fission owing to the large speed of the products and to other decay channels, such as neutron emission and nuclear fission.

From actinium to uranium

Uranium and thorium were the first actinides discovered. Uranium was identified in 1789 by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth in pitchblende ore. He named it after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered eight years earlier. Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. He then reduced the obtained yellow powder with charcoal, and extracted a black substance that he mistook for metal. Sixty years later, the French scientist Eugène-Melchior Péligot identified it as uranium oxide. He also isolated the first sample of uranium metal by heating uranium tetrachloride with metallic potassium. The atomic mass of uranium was then calculated as 120, but Dmitri Mendeleev in 1872 corrected it to 240 using his periodicity laws. This value was confirmed experimentally in 1882 by K. Zimmerman.

Thorium oxide was discovered by Friedrich Wöhler in the mineral thorianite, which was found in Norway (1827). Jöns Jacob Berzelius characterized this material in more detail in 1828. By reduction of thorium tetrachloride with potassium, he isolated the metal and named it thorium after the Norse god of thunder and lightning Thor. The same isolation method was later used by Péligot for uranium.

Actinium was discovered in 1899 by André-Louis Debierne, an assistant of Marie Curie, in the pitchblende waste left after removal of radium and polonium. He described the substance (in 1899) as similar to titanium and (in 1900) as similar to thorium. The discovery of actinium by Debierne was however questioned in 1971 and 2000, arguing that Debierne's publications in 1904 contradicted his earlier work of 1899–1900. This view instead credits the 1902 work of Friedrich Oskar Giesel, who discovered a radioactive element named emanium that behaved similarly to lanthanum. The name actinium comes from the ακτίς, ακτίνος, meaning beam or ray. This metal was discovered not by its own radiation but by the radiation of the daughter products. Owing to the close similarity of actinium and lanthanum and low abundance, pure actinium could only be produced in 1950. The term actinide was probably introduced by Victor Goldschmidt in 1937.

Protactinium was possibly isolated in 1900 by William Crookes. It was first identified in 1913, when Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring encountered the short-lived isotope 234mPa (half-life 1.17 minutes) during their studies of the 238U decay chain. They named the new element brevium (from Latin brevis meaning brief); the name was changed to protoactinium (from Greek πρῶτος + ἀκτίς meaning "first beam element") in 1918 when two groups of scientists, led by the Austrian Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn of Germany and Frederick Soddy and John Arnold Cranston of Great Britain, independently discovered the much longer-lived 231Pa. The name was shortened to protactinium in 1949. This element was little characterized until 1960, when Alfred Maddock and his co-workers in the U.K. isolated 130 grams of protactinium from 60 tonnes of waste left after extraction of uranium from its ore.

Neptunium and above
Neptunium (named for the planet Neptune, the next planet out from Uranus, after which uranium was named) was discovered by Edwin McMillan and Philip H. Abelson in 1940 in Berkeley, California. They produced the 239Np isotope (half-life 2.4 days) by bombarding uranium with slow neutrons. It was the first transuranium element produced synthetically.

Transuranium elements do not occur in sizeable quantities in nature and are commonly synthesized via nuclear reactions conducted with nuclear reactors. For example, under irradiation with reactor neutrons, uranium-238 partially converts to plutonium-239:

This synthesis reaction was used by Fermi and his collaborators in their design of the reactors located at the Hanford Site, which produced significant amounts of plutonium-239 for the nuclear weapons of the Manhattan Project and the United States' post-war nuclear arsenal.

Actinides with the highest mass numbers are synthesized by bombarding uranium, plutonium, curium and californium with ions of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, neon or boron in a particle accelerator. Thus nobelium was produced by bombarding uranium-238 with neon-22 as

The first isotopes of transplutonium elements, americium-241 and curium-242, were synthesized in 1944 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James and Albert Ghiorso. Curium-242 was obtained by bombarding plutonium-239 with 32-MeV α-particles:

The americium-241 and curium-242 isotopes also were produced by irradiating plutonium in a nuclear reactor. The latter element was named after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre who are noted for discovering radium and for their work in radioactivity.

Bombarding curium-242 with α-particles resulted in an isotope of californium 245Cf in 1950, and a similar procedure yielded berkelium-243 from americium-241 in 1949. The new elements were named after Berkeley, California, by analogy with its lanthanide homologue terbium, which was named after the village of Ytterby in Sweden.

In 1945, B. B. Cunningham obtained the first bulk chemical compound of a transplutonium element, namely americium hydroxide. Over the few years, milligram quantities of americium and microgram amounts of curium were accumulated that allowed production of isotopes of berkelium and californium. Sizeable amounts of these elements were produced in 1958, and the first californium compound (0.3 μg of CfOCl) was obtained in 1960 by B. B. Cunningham and J. C. Wallmann.

Einsteinium and fermium were identified in 1952–1953 in the fallout from the "Ivy Mike" nuclear test (1 November 1952), the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb. Instantaneous exposure of uranium-238 to a large neutron flux resulting from the explosion produced heavy isotopes of uranium, including uranium-253 and uranium-255, and their β-decay yielded einsteinium-253 and fermium-255. The discovery of the new elements and the new data on neutron capture were initially kept secret on the orders of the US military until 1955 due to Cold War tensions. Nevertheless, the Berkeley team were able to prepare einsteinium and fermium by civilian means, through the neutron bombardment of plutonium-239, and published this work in 1954 with the disclaimer that it was not the first studies that had been carried out on those elements. The "Ivy Mike" studies were declassified and published in 1955. The first significant (submicrogram) amounts of einsteinium were produced in 1961 by Cunningham and colleagues, but this has not been done for fermium yet.

The first isotope of mendelevium, 256Md (half-life 87 min), was synthesized by Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, Gregory Robert Choppin, Bernard G. Harvey and Stanley Gerald Thompson when they bombarded an 253Es target with alpha particles in the 60-inch cyclotron of Berkeley Radiation Laboratory; this was the first isotope of any element to be synthesized one atom at a time.

There were several attempts to obtain isotopes of nobelium by Swedish (1957) and American (1958) groups, but the first reliable result was the synthesis of 256No by the Russian group of Georgy Flyorov in 1965, as acknowledged by the IUPAC in 1992. In their experiments, Flyorov et al. bombarded uranium-238 with neon-22.

In 1961, Ghiorso et al. obtained the first isotope of lawrencium by irradiating californium (mostly californium-252) with boron-10 and boron-11 ions. The mass number of this isotope was not clearly established (possibly 258 or 259) at the time. In 1965, 256Lr was synthesized by Flyorov et al. from 243Am and 18O. Thus IUPAC recognized the nuclear physics teams at Dubna and Berkeley as the co-discoverers of lawrencium.

Isotopes
33 isotopes of actinium and eight excited isomeric states of some of its nuclides are known, ranging in mass number from 204 to 236. Three isotopes, 225Ac, 227Ac and 228Ac, were found in nature and the others were produced in the laboratory; only the three natural isotopes are used in applications. Actinium-225 is a member of the radioactive neptunium series; it was first discovered in 1947 as a decay product of uranium-233 and it is an α-emitter with a half-life of 10 days. Actinium-225 is less available than actinium-228, but is more promising in radiotracer applications. Actinium-227 (half-life 21.77 years) occurs in all uranium ores, but in small quantities. One gram of uranium (in radioactive equilibrium) contains only 2 gram of 227Ac. Actinium-228 is a member of the radioactive thorium series formed by the decay of 228Ra; it is a β− emitter with a half-life of 6.15 hours. In one tonne of thorium there is 5 gram of 228Ac. It was discovered by Otto Hahn in 1906.

There are 32 known isotopes of thorium ranging in mass number from 207 to 238. Of these, the longest-lived is 232Th, whose half-life of $1.4 years$ means that it still exists in nature as a primordial nuclide. The next longest-lived is 230Th, an intermediate decay product of 238U with a half-life of 75,400 years. Several other thorium isotopes have half-lives over a day; all of these are also transient in the decay chains of 232Th, 235U, and 238U.

28 isotopes of protactinium are known with mass numbers 212–239 as well as three excited isomeric states. Only 231Pa and 234Pa have been found in nature. All the isotopes have short lifetimes, except for protactinium-231 (half-life 32,760 years). The most important isotopes are 231Pa and 233Pa, which is an intermediate product in obtaining uranium-233 and is the most affordable among artificial isotopes of protactinium. 233Pa has convenient half-life and energy of γ-radiation, and thus was used in most studies of protactinium chemistry. Protactinium-233 is a β-emitter with a half-life of 26.97 days.

There are 27 known isotopes of uranium, having mass numbers 215–242 (except 220). Three of them, 234U, 235U and 238U, are present in appreciable quantities in nature. Among others, the most important is 233U, which is a final product of transformation of 232Th irradiated by slow neutrons. 233U has a much higher fission efficiency by low-energy (thermal) neutrons, compared e.g. with 235U. Most uranium chemistry studies were carried out on uranium-238 owing to its long half-life of 4.4 years.

There are 25 isotopes of neptunium with mass numbers 219–244 (except 221); they are all highly radioactive. The most popular among scientists are long-lived 237Np (t1/2 = 2.20 years) and short-lived 239Np, 238Np (t1/2 ~ 2 days).

There are 20 known isotopes of plutonium, having mass numbers 228–247. The most stable isotope of plutonium is 244Pu with half-life of 8.13 years.

Eighteen isotopes of americium are known with mass numbers from 229 to 247 (with the exception of 231). The most important are 241Am and 243Am, which are alpha-emitters and also emit soft, but intense γ-rays; both of them can be obtained in an isotopically pure form. Chemical properties of americium were first studied with 241Am, but later shifted to 243Am, which is almost 20 times less radioactive. The disadvantage of 243Am is production of the short-lived daughter isotope 239Np, which has to be considered in the data analysis.

Among 19 isotopes of curium, ranging in mass number from 233 to 251, the most accessible are 242Cm and 244Cm; they are α-emitters, but with much shorter lifetime than the americium isotopes. These isotopes emit almost no γ-radiation, but undergo spontaneous fission with the associated emission of neutrons. More long-lived isotopes of curium (245–248Cm, all α-emitters) are formed as a mixture during neutron irradiation of plutonium or americium. Upon short irradiation, this mixture is dominated by 246Cm, and then 248Cm begins to accumulate. Both of these isotopes, especially 248Cm, have a longer half-life (3.48 years) and are much more convenient for carrying out chemical research than 242Cm and 244Cm, but they also have a rather high rate of spontaneous fission. 247Cm has the longest lifetime among isotopes of curium (1.56 years), but is not formed in large quantities because of the strong fission induced by thermal neutrons.

Seventeen isotopes of berkelium have been identified with mass numbers 233, 234, 236, 238, and 240–252. Only 249Bk is available in large quantities; it has a relatively short half-life of 330 days and emits mostly soft β-particles, which are inconvenient for detection. Its alpha radiation is rather weak (1.45% with respect to β-radiation), but is sometimes used to detect this isotope. 247Bk is an alpha-emitter with a long half-life of 1,380 years, but it is hard to obtain in appreciable quantities; it is not formed upon neutron irradiation of plutonium because β-decay of curium isotopes with mass number below 248 is not known. (247Cm would actually release energy by β-decaying to 247Bk, but this has never been seen.)

The 20 isotopes of californium with mass numbers 237–256 are formed in nuclear reactors; californium-253 is a β-emitter and the rest are α-emitters. The isotopes with even mass numbers (250Cf, 252Cf and 254Cf) have a high rate of spontaneous fission, especially 254Cf of which 99.7% decays by spontaneous fission. Californium-249 has a relatively long half-life (352 years), weak spontaneous fission and strong γ-emission that facilitates its identification. 249Cf is not formed in large quantities in a nuclear reactor because of the slow β-decay of the parent isotope 249Bk and a large cross section of interaction with neutrons, but it can be accumulated in the isotopically pure form as the β-decay product of (pre-selected) 249Bk. Californium produced by reactor-irradiation of plutonium mostly consists of 250Cf and 252Cf, the latter being predominant for large neutron fluences, and its study is hindered by the strong neutron radiation.

Among the 18 known isotopes of einsteinium with mass numbers from 240 to 257, the most affordable is 253Es. It is an α-emitter with a half-life of 20.47 days, a relatively weak γ-emission and small spontaneous fission rate as compared with the isotopes of californium. Prolonged neutron irradiation also produces a long-lived isotope 254Es (t1/2 = 275.5 days).

Twenty isotopes of fermium are known with mass numbers of 241–260. 254Fm, 255Fm and 256Fm are α-emitters with a short half-life (hours), which can be isolated in significant amounts. 257Fm (t1/2 = 100 days) can accumulate upon prolonged and strong irradiation. All these isotopes are characterized by high rates of spontaneous fission.

Among the 17 known isotopes of mendelevium (mass numbers from 244 to 260), the most studied is 256Md, which mainly decays through electron capture (α-radiation is ≈10%) with a half-life of 77 minutes. Another alpha emitter, 258Md, has a half-life of 53 days. Both these isotopes are produced from rare einsteinium (253Es and 255Es respectively), that therefore limits their availability.

Long-lived isotopes of nobelium and isotopes of lawrencium (and of heavier elements) have relatively short half-lives. For nobelium, 13 isotopes are known, with mass numbers 249–260 and 262. The chemical properties of nobelium and lawrencium were studied with 255No (t1/2 = 3 min) and 256Lr (t1/2 = 35 s). The longest-lived nobelium isotope, 259No, has a half-life of approximately 1 hour. Lawrencium has 14 known isotopes with mass numbers 251–262, 264, and 266. The most stable of them is 266Lr with a half life of 11 hours.

Among all of these, the only isotopes that occur in sufficient quantities in nature to be detected in anything more than traces and have a measurable contribution to the atomic weights of the actinides are the primordial 232Th, 235U, and 238U, and three long-lived decay products of natural uranium, 230Th, 231Pa, and 234U. Natural thorium consists of 0.02(2)% 230Th and 99.98(2)% 232Th; natural protactinium consists of 100% 231Pa; and natural uranium consists of 0.0054(5)% 234U, 0.7204(6)% 235U, and 99.2742(10)% 238U.

Formation in nuclear reactors
The figure buildup of actinides is a table of nuclides with the number of neutrons on the horizontal axis (isotopes) and the number of protons on the vertical axis (elements). The red dot divides the nuclides in two groups, so the figure is more compact. Each nuclide is represented by a square with the mass number of the element and its half-life. Naturally existing actinide isotopes (Th, U) are marked with a bold border, alpha emitters have a yellow colour, and beta emitters have a blue colour. Pink indicates electron capture (236Np), whereas white stands for a long-lasting metastable state (242Am).

The formation of actinide nuclides is primarily characterised by:
 * Neutron capture reactions (n,γ), which are represented in the figure by a short right arrow.
 * The (n,2n) reactions and the less frequently occurring (γ,n) reactions are also taken into account, both of which are marked by a short left arrow.
 * Even more rarely and only triggered by fast neutrons, the (n,3n) reaction occurs, which is represented in the figure with one example, marked by a long left arrow.

In addition to these neutron- or gamma-induced nuclear reactions, the radioactive conversion of actinide nuclides also affects the nuclide inventory in a reactor. These decay types are marked in the figure by diagonal arrows. The beta-minus decay, marked with an arrow pointing up-left, plays a major role for the balance of the particle densities of the nuclides. Nuclides decaying by positron emission (beta-plus decay) or electron capture (ϵ) do not occur in a nuclear reactor except as products of knockout reactions; their decays are marked with arrows pointing down-right. Due to the long half-lives of the given nuclides, alpha decay plays almost no role in the formation and decay of the actinides in a power reactor, as the residence time of the nuclear fuel in the reactor core is rather short (a few years). Exceptions are the two relatively short-lived nuclides 242Cm (T1/2 = 163 d) and 236Pu (T1/2 = 2.9 y). Only for these two cases, the α decay is marked on the nuclide map by a long arrow pointing down-left. A few long-lived actinide isotopes, such as 244Pu and 250Cm, cannot be produced in reactors because neutron capture does not happen quickly enough to bypass the short-lived beta-decaying nuclides 243Pu and 249Cm; they can however be generated in nuclear explosions, which have much higher neutron fluxes.

Distribution in nature

Thorium and uranium are the most abundant actinides in nature with the respective mass concentrations of 16 ppm and 4 ppm. Uranium mostly occurs in the Earth's crust as a mixture of its oxides in the mineral uraninite, which is also called pitchblende because of its black color. There are several dozens of other uranium minerals such as carnotite (KUO2VO4·3H2O) and autunite (Ca(UO2)2(PO4)2·nH2O). The isotopic composition of natural uranium is 238U (relative abundance 99.2742%), 235U (0.7204%) and 234U (0.0054%); of these 238U has the largest half-life of 4.51 years. The worldwide production of uranium in 2009 amounted to 50,572 tonnes, of which 27.3% was mined in Kazakhstan. Other important uranium mining countries are Canada (20.1%), Australia (15.7%), Namibia (9.1%), Russia (7.0%), and Niger (6.4%).

The most abundant thorium minerals are thorianite (ThO2), thorite (ThSiO4) and monazite, ((Th,Ca,Ce)PO4). Most thorium minerals contain uranium and vice versa; and they all have significant fraction of lanthanides. Rich deposits of thorium minerals are located in the United States (440,000 tonnes), Australia and India (~300,000 tonnes each) and Canada (~100,000 tonnes).

The abundance of actinium in the Earth's crust is only about 5%. Actinium is mostly present in uranium-containing, but also in other minerals, though in much smaller quantities. The content of actinium in most natural objects corresponds to the isotopic equilibrium of parent isotope 235U, and it is not affected by the weak Ac migration. Protactinium is more abundant (10−12%) in the Earth's crust than actinium. It was discovered in uranium ore in 1913 by Fajans and Göhring. As actinium, the distribution of protactinium follows that of 235U.

The half-life of the longest-lived isotope of neptunium, 237Np, is negligible compared to the age of the Earth. Thus neptunium is present in nature in negligible amounts produced as intermediate decay products of other isotopes. Traces of plutonium in uranium minerals were first found in 1942, and the more systematic results on 239Pu are summarized in the table (no other plutonium isotopes could be detected in those samples). The upper limit of abundance of the longest-living isotope of plutonium, 244Pu, is 3%. Plutonium could not be detected in samples of lunar soil. Owing to its scarcity in nature, most plutonium is produced synthetically.

Extraction

Owing to the low abundance of actinides, their extraction is a complex, multistep process. Fluorides of actinides are usually used because they are insoluble in water and can be easily separated with redox reactions. Fluorides are reduced with calcium, magnesium or barium:

Among the actinides, thorium and uranium are the easiest to isolate. Thorium is extracted mostly from monazite: thorium pyrophosphate (ThP2O7) is reacted with nitric acid, and the produced thorium nitrate treated with tributyl phosphate. Rare-earth impurities are separated by increasing the pH in sulfate solution.

In another extraction method, monazite is decomposed with a 45% aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide at 140 °C. Mixed metal hydroxides are extracted first, filtered at 80 °C, washed with water and dissolved with concentrated hydrochloric acid. Next, the acidic solution is neutralized with hydroxides to pH = 5.8 that results in precipitation of thorium hydroxide (Th(OH)4) contaminated with ~3% of rare-earth hydroxides; the rest of rare-earth hydroxides remains in solution. Thorium hydroxide is dissolved in an inorganic acid and then purified from the rare earth elements. An efficient method is the dissolution of thorium hydroxide in nitric acid, because the resulting solution can be purified by extraction with organic solvents:

 * Th(OH)4 + 4 HNO3 → Th(NO3)4 + 4 H2O

Metallic thorium is separated from the anhydrous oxide, chloride or fluoride by reacting it with calcium in an inert atmosphere:

 * ThO2 + 2 Ca → 2 CaO + Th

Sometimes thorium is extracted by electrolysis of a fluoride in a mixture of sodium and potassium chloride at 700–800 °C in a graphite crucible. Highly pure thorium can be extracted from its iodide with the crystal bar process.

Uranium is extracted from its ores in various ways. In one method, the ore is burned and then reacted with nitric acid to convert uranium into a dissolved state. Treating the solution with a solution of tributyl phosphate (TBP) in kerosene transforms uranium into an organic form UO2(NO3)2(TBP)2. The insoluble impurities are filtered and the uranium is extracted by reaction with hydroxides as (NH4)2U2O7 or with hydrogen peroxide as UO4·2H2O.

When the uranium ore is rich in such minerals as dolomite, magnesite, etc., those minerals consume much acid. In this case, the carbonate method is used for uranium extraction. Its main component is an aqueous solution of sodium carbonate, which converts uranium into a complex [UO2(CO3)3]4−, which is stable in aqueous solutions at low concentrations of hydroxide ions. The advantages of the sodium carbonate method are that the chemicals have low corrosivity (compared to nitrates) and that most non-uranium metals precipitate from the solution. The disadvantage is that tetravalent uranium compounds precipitate as well. Therefore, the uranium ore is treated with sodium carbonate at elevated temperature and under oxygen pressure:
 * 2 UO2 + O2 + 6 → 2 [UO2(CO3)3]4−

This equation suggests that the best solvent for the uranyl carbonate processing is a mixture of carbonate with bicarbonate. At high pH, this results in precipitation of diuranate, which is treated with hydrogen in the presence of nickel yielding an insoluble uranium tetracarbonate.

Another separation method uses polymeric resins as a polyelectrolyte. Ion exchange processes in the resins result in separation of uranium. Uranium from resins is washed with a solution of ammonium nitrate or nitric acid that yields uranyl nitrate, UO2(NO3)2·6H2O. When heated, it turns into UO3, which is converted to UO2 with hydrogen:
 * UO3 + H2 → UO2 + H2O

Reacting uranium dioxide with hydrofluoric acid changes it to uranium tetrafluoride, which yields uranium metal upon reaction with magnesium metal:
 * 4 HF + UO2 → UF4 + 2 H2O

To extract plutonium, neutron-irradiated uranium is dissolved in nitric acid, and a reducing agent (FeSO4, or H2O2) is added to the resulting solution. This addition changes the oxidation state of plutonium from +6 to +4, while uranium remains in the form of uranyl nitrate (UO2(NO3)2). The solution is treated with a reducing agent and neutralized with ammonium carbonate to pH = 8 that results in precipitation of Pu4+ compounds.

In another method, Pu4+ and are first extracted with tributyl phosphate, then reacted with hydrazine washing out the recovered plutonium.

The major difficulty in separation of actinium is the similarity of its properties with those of lanthanum. Thus actinium is either synthesized in nuclear reactions from isotopes of radium or separated using ion-exchange procedures.

Properties
Actinides have similar properties to lanthanides. Just as the 4f electron shells are filled in the lanthanides, the 5f electron shells are filled in the actinides. Because the 5f, 6d, 7s, and 7p shells are close in energy, many irregular configurations arise; thus, in gas-phase atoms, just as the first 4f electron only appears in cerium, so the first 5f electron appears even later, in protactinium. However, just as lanthanum is the first element to use the 4f shell in compounds, so actinium is the first element to use the 5f shell in compounds. The f-shells complete their filling together, at ytterbium and nobelium. The first experimental evidence for the filling of the 5f shell in actinides was obtained by McMillan and Abelson in 1940. As in lanthanides (see lanthanide contraction), the ionic radius of actinides monotonically decreases with atomic number (see also Aufbau principle).

The shift of electron configurations in the gas phase does not always match the chemical behaviour. For example, the early-transition-metal-like prominence of the highest oxidation state, corresponding to removal of all valence electrons, extends up to uranium even though the 5f shells begin filling before that. On the other hand, electron configurations resembling the lanthanide congeners already begin at plutonium, even though lanthanide-like behaviour does not become dominant until the second half of the series begins at curium. The elements between uranium and curium form a transition between these two kinds of behaviour, where higher oxidation states continue to exist, but lose stability with respect to the +3 state. The +2 state becomes more important near the end of the series, and is the most stable oxidation state for nobelium, the last 5f element. Oxidation states rise again only after nobelium, showing that a new series of 6d transition metals has begun: lawrencium shows only the +3 oxidation state, and rutherfordium only the +4 state, making them congeners of lutetium and hafnium in the 5d row.

Physical properties

Actinides are typical metals. All of them are soft and have a silvery color (but tarnish in air), relatively high density and plasticity. Some of them can be cut with a knife. Their electrical resistivity varies between 15 and 150 μΩ·cm. The hardness of thorium is similar to that of soft steel, so heated pure thorium can be rolled in sheets and pulled into wire. Thorium is nearly half as dense as uranium and plutonium, but is harder than either of them. All actinides are radioactive, paramagnetic, and, with the exception of actinium, have several crystalline phases: plutonium has seven, and uranium, neptunium and californium three. The crystal structures of protactinium, uranium, neptunium and plutonium do not have clear analogs among the lanthanides and are more similar to those of the 3d-transition metals.

All actinides are pyrophoric, especially when finely divided, that is, they spontaneously ignite upon reaction with air at room temperature. The melting point of actinides does not have a clear dependence on the number of f-electrons. The unusually low melting point of neptunium and plutonium (~640 °C) is explained by hybridization of 5f and 6d orbitals and the formation of directional bonds in these metals.

Chemical properties
Like the lanthanides, all actinides are highly reactive with halogens and chalcogens; however, the actinides react more easily. Actinides, especially those with a small number of 5f-electrons, are prone to hybridization. This is explained by the similarity of the electron energies at the 5f, 7s and 6d shells. Most actinides exhibit a larger variety of valence states, and the most stable are +6 for uranium, +5 for protactinium and neptunium, +4 for thorium and plutonium and +3 for actinium and other actinides.

Actinium is chemically similar to lanthanum, which is explained by their similar ionic radii and electronic structures. Like lanthanum, actinium almost always has an oxidation state of +3 in compounds, but it is less reactive and has more pronounced basic properties. Among other trivalent actinides Ac3+ is least acidic, i.e. has the weakest tendency to hydrolyze in aqueous solutions.

Thorium is rather active chemically. Owing to lack of electrons on 6d and 5f orbitals, tetravalent thorium compounds are colorless. At pH < 3, solutions of thorium salts are dominated by the cations [Th(H2O)8]4+. The Th4+ ion is relatively large, and depending on the coordination number can have a radius between 0.95 and 1.14 Å. As a result, thorium salts have a weak tendency to hydrolyse. The distinctive ability of thorium salts is their high solubility both in water and polar organic solvents.

Protactinium exhibits two valence states; the +5 is stable, and the +4 state easily oxidizes to protactinium(V). Thus tetravalent protactinium in solutions is obtained by the action of strong reducing agents in a hydrogen atmosphere. Tetravalent protactinium is chemically similar to uranium(IV) and thorium(IV). Fluorides, phosphates, hypophosphates, iodates and phenylarsonates of protactinium(IV) are insoluble in water and dilute acids. Protactinium forms soluble carbonates. The hydrolytic properties of pentavalent protactinium are close to those of tantalum(V) and niobium(V). The complex chemical behavior of protactinium is a consequence of the start of the filling of the 5f shell in this element.

Uranium has a valence from 3 to 6, the last being most stable. In the hexavalent state, uranium is very similar to the group 6 elements. Many compounds of uranium(IV) and uranium(VI) are non-stoichiometric, i.e. have variable composition. For example, the actual chemical formula of uranium dioxide is UO2+x, where x varies between −0.4 and 0.32. Uranium(VI) compounds are weak oxidants. Most of them contain the linear "uranyl" group,. Between 4 and 6 ligands can be accommodated in an equatorial plane perpendicular to the uranyl group. The uranyl group acts as a hard acid and forms stronger complexes with oxygen-donor ligands than with nitrogen-donor ligands. and are also the common form of Np and Pu in the +6 oxidation state. Uranium(IV) compounds exhibit reducing properties, e.g., they are easily oxidized by atmospheric oxygen. Uranium(III) is a very strong reducing agent. Owing to the presence of d-shell, uranium (as well as many other actinides) forms organometallic compounds, such as UIII(C5H5)3 and UIV(C5H5)4.

Neptunium has valence states from 3 to 7, which can be simultaneously observed in solutions. The most stable state in solution is +5, but the valence +4 is preferred in solid neptunium compounds. Neptunium metal is very reactive. Ions of neptunium are prone to hydrolysis and formation of coordination compounds.

Plutonium also exhibits valence states between 3 and 7 inclusive, and thus is chemically similar to neptunium and uranium. It is highly reactive, and quickly forms an oxide film in air. Plutonium reacts with hydrogen even at temperatures as low as 25–50 °C; it also easily forms halides and intermetallic compounds. Hydrolysis reactions of plutonium ions of different oxidation states are quite diverse. Plutonium(V) can enter polymerization reactions.

The largest chemical diversity among actinides is observed in americium, which can have valence between 2 and 6. Divalent americium is obtained only in dry compounds and non-aqueous solutions (acetonitrile). Oxidation states +3, +5 and +6 are typical for aqueous solutions, but also in the solid state. Tetravalent americium forms stable solid compounds (dioxide, fluoride and hydroxide) as well as complexes in aqueous solutions. It was reported that in alkaline solution americium can be oxidized to the heptavalent state, but these data proved erroneous. The most stable valence of americium is 3 in aqueous solution and 3 or 4 in solid compounds.

Valence 3 is dominant in all subsequent elements up to lawrencium (with the exception of nobelium). Curium can be tetravalent in solids (fluoride, dioxide). Berkelium, along with a valence of +3, also shows the valence of +4, more stable than that of curium; the valence 4 is observed in solid fluoride and dioxide. The stability of Bk4+ in aqueous solution is close to that of Ce4+. Only valence 3 was observed for californium, einsteinium and fermium. The divalent state is proven for mendelevium and nobelium, and in nobelium it is more stable than the trivalent state. Lawrencium shows valence 3 both in solutions and solids.

The redox potential increases from −0.32 V in uranium, through 0.34 V (Np) and 1.04 V (Pu) to 1.34 V in americium revealing the increasing reduction ability of the An4+ ion from americium to uranium. All actinides form AnH3 hydrides of black color with salt-like properties. Actinides also produce carbides with the general formula of AnC or AnC2 (U2C3 for uranium) as well as sulfides An2S3 and AnS2.

Oxides and hydroxides

 * An – actinide
 * Depending on the isotopes

Some actinides can exist in several oxide forms such as An2O3, AnO2, An2O5 and AnO3. For all actinides, oxides AnO3 are amphoteric and An2O3, AnO2 and An2O5 are basic, they easily react with water, forming bases:

 * An2O3 + 3 H2O → 2 An(OH)3.

These bases are poorly soluble in water and by their activity are close to the hydroxides of rare-earth metals. Np(OH)3 has not yet been synthesized, Pu(OH)3 has a blue color while Am(OH)3 is pink and Cm(OH)3 is colorless. Bk(OH)3 and Cf(OH)3 are also known, as are tetravalent hydroxides for Np, Pu and Am and pentavalent for Np and Am.

The strongest base is of actinium. All compounds of actinium are colorless, except for black actinium sulfide (Ac2S3). Dioxides of tetravalent actinides crystallize in the cubic system, same as in calcium fluoride.

Thorium reacting with oxygen exclusively forms the dioxide:

Thorium dioxide is a refractory material with the highest melting point among any known oxide (3390 °C). Adding 0.8–1% ThO2 to tungsten stabilizes its structure, so the doped filaments have better mechanical stability to vibrations. To dissolve ThO2 in acids, it is heated to 500–600 °C; heating above 600 °C produces a very resistant to acids and other reagents form of ThO2. Small addition of fluoride ions catalyses dissolution of thorium dioxide in acids.

Two protactinium oxides have been obtained: PaO2 (black) and Pa2O5 (white); the former is isomorphic with ThO2 and the latter is easier to obtain. Both oxides are basic, and Pa(OH)5 is a weak, poorly soluble base.

Decomposition of certain salts of uranium, for example UO2(NO3)·6H2O in air at 400 °C, yields orange or yellow UO3. This oxide is amphoteric and forms several hydroxides, the most stable being uranyl hydroxide UO2(OH)2. Reaction of uranium(VI) oxide with hydrogen results in uranium dioxide, which is similar in its properties with ThO2. This oxide is also basic and corresponds to the uranium hydroxide U(OH)4.

Plutonium, neptunium and americium form two basic oxides: An2O3 and AnO2. Neptunium trioxide is unstable; thus, only Np3O8 could be obtained so far. However, the oxides of plutonium and neptunium with the chemical formula AnO2 and An2O3 are well characterized.

Salts

 * *An – actinide
 * Depending on the isotopes

Actinides easily react with halogens forming salts with the formulas MX3 and MX4 (X = halogen). So the first berkelium compound, BkCl3, was synthesized in 1962 with an amount of 3 nanograms. Like the halogens of rare earth elements, actinide chlorides, bromides, and iodides are water-soluble, and fluorides are insoluble. Uranium easily yields a colorless hexafluoride, which sublimates at a temperature of 56.5 °C; because of its volatility, it is used in the separation of uranium isotopes with gas centrifuge or gaseous diffusion. Actinide hexafluorides have properties close to anhydrides. They are very sensitive to moisture and hydrolyze forming AnO2F2. The pentachloride and black hexachloride of uranium were synthesized, but they are both unstable.

Action of acids on actinides yields salts, and if the acids are non-oxidizing then the actinide in the salt is in low-valence state:
 * U + 2 H2SO4 → U(SO4)2 + 2 H2
 * 2 Pu + 6 HCl → 2 PuCl3 + 3 H2

However, in these reactions the regenerating hydrogen can react with the metal, forming the corresponding hydride. Uranium reacts with acids and water much more easily than thorium.

Actinide salts can also be obtained by dissolving the corresponding hydroxides in acids. Nitrates, chlorides, sulfates and perchlorates of actinides are water-soluble. When crystallizing from aqueous solutions, these salts form hydrates, such as Th(NO3)4·6H2O, Th(SO4)2·9H2O and Pu2(SO4)3·7H2O. Salts of high-valence actinides easily hydrolyze. So, colorless sulfate, chloride, perchlorate and nitrate of thorium transform into basic salts with formulas Th(OH)2SO4 and Th(OH)3NO3. The solubility and insolubility of trivalent and tetravalent actinides is like that of lanthanide salts. So phosphates, fluorides, oxalates, iodates and carbonates of actinides are weakly soluble in water; they precipitate as hydrates, such as ThF4·3H2O and Th(CrO4)2·3H2O.

Actinides with oxidation state +6, except for the AnO22+-type cations, form [AnO4]2−, [An2O7]2− and other complex anions. For example, uranium, neptunium and plutonium form salts of the Na2UO4 (uranate) and (NH4)2U2O7 (diuranate) types. In comparison with lanthanides, actinides more easily form coordination compounds, and this ability increases with the actinide valence. Trivalent actinides do not form fluoride coordination compounds, whereas tetravalent thorium forms K2ThF6, KThF5, and even K5ThF9 complexes. Thorium also forms the corresponding sulfates (for example Na2SO4·Th(SO4)2·5H2O), nitrates and thiocyanates. Salts with the general formula An2Th(NO3)6·nH2O are of coordination nature, with the coordination number of thorium equal to 12. Even easier is to produce complex salts of pentavalent and hexavalent actinides. The most stable coordination compounds of actinides – tetravalent thorium and uranium – are obtained in reactions with diketones, e.g. acetylacetone.

Applications
While actinides have some established daily-life applications, such as in smoke detectors (americium) and gas mantles (thorium), they are mostly used in nuclear weapons and as fuel in nuclear reactors. The last two areas exploit the property of actinides to release enormous energy in nuclear reactions, which under certain conditions may become self-sustaining chain reactions.

The most important isotope for nuclear power applications is uranium-235. It is used in the thermal reactor, and its concentration in natural uranium does not exceed 0.72%. This isotope strongly absorbs thermal neutrons releasing much energy. One fission act of 1 gram of 235U converts into about 1 MW·day. Of importance, is that emits more neutrons than it absorbs; upon reaching the critical mass,  enters into a self-sustaining chain reaction. Typically, uranium nucleus is divided into two fragments with the release of 2–3 neutrons, for example:
 * + ⟶  +  + 3

Other promising actinide isotopes for nuclear power are thorium-232 and its product from the thorium fuel cycle, uranium-233. Emission of neutrons during the fission of uranium is important not only for maintaining the nuclear chain reaction, but also for the synthesis of the heavier actinides. Uranium-239 converts via β-decay into plutonium-239, which, like uranium-235, is capable of spontaneous fission. The world's first nuclear reactors were built not for energy, but for producing plutonium-239 for nuclear weapons.

About half of produced thorium is used as the light-emitting material of gas mantles. Thorium is also added into multicomponent alloys of magnesium and zinc. Mg-Th alloys are light and strong, but also have high melting point and ductility and thus are widely used in the aviation industry and in the production of missiles. Thorium also has good electron emission properties, with long lifetime and low potential barrier for the emission. The relative content of thorium and uranium isotopes is widely used to estimate the age of various objects, including stars (see radiometric dating).

The major application of plutonium has been in nuclear weapons, where the isotope plutonium-239 was a key component due to its ease of fission and availability. Plutonium-based designs allow reducing the critical mass to about a third of that for uranium-235. The "Fat Man"-type plutonium bombs produced during the Manhattan Project used explosive compression of plutonium to obtain significantly higher densities than normal, combined with a central neutron source to begin the reaction and increase efficiency. Thus only 6.2 kg of plutonium was needed for an explosive yield equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. (See also Nuclear weapon design.) Hypothetically, as little as 4 kg of plutonium—and maybe even less—could be used to make a single atomic bomb using very sophisticated assembly designs.

Plutonium-238 is potentially more efficient isotope for nuclear reactors, since it has smaller critical mass than uranium-235, but it continues to release much thermal energy (0.56 W/g) by decay even when the fission chain reaction is stopped by control rods. Its application is limited by its high price (about US$1000/g). This isotope has been used in thermopiles and water distillation systems of some space satellites and stations. The Galileo and Apollo spacecraft (e.g. Apollo 14 ) had heaters powered by kilogram quantities of plutonium-238 oxide; this heat is also transformed into electricity with thermopiles. The decay of plutonium-238 produces relatively harmless alpha particles and is not accompanied by gamma rays. Therefore, this isotope (~160 mg) is used as the energy source in heart pacemakers where it lasts about 5 times longer than conventional batteries.

Actinium-227 is used as a neutron source. Its high specific energy (14.5 W/g) and the possibility of obtaining significant quantities of thermally stable compounds are attractive for use in long-lasting thermoelectric generators for remote use. 228Ac is used as an indicator of radioactivity in chemical research, as it emits high-energy electrons (2.18 MeV) that can be easily detected. 228Ac-228Ra mixtures are widely used as an intense gamma-source in industry and medicine.

Development of self-glowing actinide-doped materials with durable crystalline matrices is a new area of actinide utilization as the addition of alpha-emitting radionuclides to some glasses and crystals may confer luminescence.

Toxicity

Radioactive substances can harm human health via (i) local skin contamination, (ii) internal exposure due to ingestion of radioactive isotopes, and (iii) external overexposure by β-activity and γ-radiation. Together with radium and transuranium elements, actinium is one of the most dangerous radioactive poisons with high specific α-activity. The most important feature of actinium is its ability to accumulate and remain in the surface layer of skeletons. At the initial stage of poisoning, actinium accumulates in the liver. Another danger of actinium is that it undergoes radioactive decay faster than being excreted. Adsorption from the digestive tract is much smaller (~0.05%) for actinium than radium.

Protactinium in the body tends to accumulate in the kidneys and bones. The maximum safe dose of protactinium in the human body is 0.03 μCi that corresponds to 0.5 micrograms of 231Pa. This isotope, which might be present in the air as aerosol, is 2.5 times more toxic than hydrocyanic acid.

Plutonium, when entering the body through air, food or blood (e.g. a wound), mostly settles in the lungs, liver and bones with only about 10% going to other organs, and remains there for decades. The long residence time of plutonium in the body is partly explained by its poor solubility in water. Some isotopes of plutonium emit ionizing α-radiation, which damages the surrounding cells. The median lethal dose (LD50) for 30 days in dogs after intravenous injection of plutonium is 0.32 milligram per kg of body mass, and thus the lethal dose for humans is approximately 22 mg for a person weighing 70 kg; the amount for respiratory exposure should be approximately four times greater. Another estimate assumes that plutonium is 50 times less toxic than radium, and thus permissible content of plutonium in the body should be 5 μg or 0.3 μCi. Such amount is nearly invisible under microscope. After trials on animals, this maximum permissible dose was reduced to 0.65 μg or 0.04 μCi. Studies on animals also revealed that the most dangerous plutonium exposure route is through inhalation, after which 5–25% of inhaled substances is retained in the body. Depending on the particle size and solubility of the plutonium compounds, plutonium is localized either in the lungs or in the lymphatic system, or is absorbed in the blood and then transported to the liver and bones. Contamination via food is the least likely way. In this case, only about 0.05% of soluble and 0.01% of insoluble compounds of plutonium absorbs into blood, and the rest is excreted. Exposure of damaged skin to plutonium would retain nearly 100% of it.

Using actinides in nuclear fuel, sealed radioactive sources or advanced materials such as self-glowing crystals has many potential benefits. However, a serious concern is the extremely high radiotoxicity of actinides and their migration in the environment. Use of chemically unstable forms of actinides in MOX and sealed radioactive sources is not appropriate by modern safety standards. There is a challenge to develop stable and durable actinide-bearing materials, which provide safe storage, use and final disposal. A key need is application of actinide solid solutions in durable crystalline host phases.

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title: Actinide


text:
Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.

Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and married Marilyn Monroe. In 1980, he received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. He received the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 1999.

Early life and education
Miller was born in Harlem, in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the second of three children of Augusta (Barnett) and Isidore Miller. He was born into a Jewish family of Polish-Jewish descent. His father was born in Radomyśl Wielki, Galicia (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Poland), and his mother was a native of New York whose parents also arrived from that town. Isidore owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing 400 people. He became a well respected man in the community. The family, including Miller's younger sister Joan Copeland, lived on West 110th Street in Manhattan, owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens, and employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. (One source says they moved to Midwood.) As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. Miller later published an account of his early years under the title "A Boy Grew in Brooklyn". After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition at the University of Michigan. After graduation (c. 1936), he worked as a psychiatric aide and copywriter before accepting faculty posts at New York University and University of New Hampshire.

On May 1, 1935, he joined the League of American Writers (1935–1943), whose members included Alexander Trachtenberg of International Publishers, Franklin Folsom, Louis Untermeyer, I. F. Stone, Myra Page, Millen Brand, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett. (Members were largely either Communist Party members or fellow travelers.)

At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism and wrote for the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, and the satirical Gargoyle Humor Magazine. It was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain. He switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain. The award led him to consider that he could have a career as a playwright. He enrolled in a playwriting seminar with the influential Professor Kenneth Rowe, who emphasized how a play was built to achieve its intended effect, or what Miller called "the dynamics of play construction". Rowe gave Miller realistic feedback and much-needed encouragement, and became a lifelong friend. Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater through the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and the Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000. In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award. After his graduation in 1938, he joined the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project despite the more lucrative offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox. However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project in 1939. Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.

1940–1949: Early career
In 1940, Miller married Mary Grace Slattery. The couple had two children, Jane (born September 7, 1944) and Robert (May 31, 1947 – March 6, 2022). Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high school football injury to his left kneecap. In 1944 Miller's first play was produced: The Man Who Had All the Luck won the Theatre Guild's National Award. The play closed after four performances with disastrous reviews.

In 1947, Miller's play All My Sons, the writing of which had commenced in 1941, was a success on Broadway (earning him his first Tony Award, for Best Author) and his reputation as a playwright was established. Years later, in a 1994 interview with Ron Rifkin, Miller said that most contemporary critics regarded All My Sons as "a very depressing play in a time of great optimism" and that positive reviews from Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times had saved it from failure.

In 1948, Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman. Within six weeks, he completed the rest of the play, one of the classics of world theater. Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, at the Morosco Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, Mildred Dunnock as Linda, Arthur Kennedy as Biff, and Cameron Mitchell as Happy. The play was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, winning a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Drama Circle Critics' Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards. The play was performed 742 times.

In 1949, Miller exchanged letters with Eugene O'Neill regarding Miller's production of All My Sons. O'Neill had sent Miller a congratulatory telegram; in response, he wrote a letter that consisted of a few paragraphs detailing his gratitude for the telegram, apologizing for not responding earlier, and inviting Eugene to the opening of Death of a Salesman. O'Neill replied, accepting the apology, but declining the invitation, explaining that his Parkinson's disease made it difficult to travel. He ended the letter with an invitation to Boston, a trip that never occurred.

1950–1963: Critical years and HUAC controversy
In 1955, a one-act version of Miller's verse drama A View from the Bridge opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller revised A View from the Bridge as a two-act prose drama, which Peter Brook directed in London. A French-Italian co-production Vu du pont, based on the play, was released in 1962.

In 1952, Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets, Paula Strasberg, Lillian Hellman, J. Edward Bromberg, and John Garfield, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party. Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to the HUAC, the pair's friendship ended. After speaking with Kazan about his testimony, Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, to research the witch trials of 1692. He and Kazan did not speak to each other for the next ten years. Kazan later defended his own actions through his film On the Waterfront, in which a dockworker heroically testifies against a corrupt union boss. Miller would retaliate against Kazan's work by writing A View from the Bridge, a play where a longshoreman outs his co-workers motivated only by jealousy and greed. He sent a copy of the initial script to Kazan and when the director asked in jest to direct the movie, Miller replied "I only sent you the script to let you know what I think of Stool-Pigeons."

In The Crucible, Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692. The play opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953. Though widely considered only somewhat successful at the time of its release, today The Crucible is Miller's most frequently produced work throughout the world. It was adapted into an opera by Robert Ward in 1961.

The HUAC took an interest in Miller himself not long after The Crucible opened, engineering the US State Department's denying him a passport to attend the play's London opening in 1954. When Miller applied in 1956 for a routine renewal of his passport, the House Un-American Activities Committee used this opportunity to subpoena him to appear before the committee. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman, Francis E. Walter (D-PA) agreed. When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career, he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee demanded the names of friends and colleagues who had participated in similar activities. Miller refused to comply, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him." As a result, a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. Miller was sentenced to a fine and a prison sentence, blacklisted from Hollywood, and disallowed a US passport. In August 1958, his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of the HUAC.

Miller's experience with the HUAC affected him throughout his life. In the late 1970s, he joined other celebrities (including William Styron and Mike Nichols) who were brought together by the journalist Joan Barthel. Barthel's coverage of the highly publicized Barbara Gibbons murder case helped raise bail for Gibbons' son Peter Reilly, who had been convicted of his mother's murder based on what many felt was a coerced confession and little other evidence. Barthel documented the case in her book A Death in Canaan, which was made as a television film of the same name and broadcast in 1978. City Confidential, an A&E Network series, produced an episode about the murder, postulating that part of the reason Miller took such an active interest (including supporting Reilly's defense and using his own celebrity to bring attention to Reilly's plight) was because he had felt similarly persecuted in his run-ins with the HUAC. He sympathized with Reilly, whom he firmly believed to be innocent and to have been railroaded by the Connecticut State Police and the Attorney General who had initially prosecuted the case.

Miller began work on writing the screenplay for The Misfits in 1960, directed by John Huston and starring Monroe. It was during the filming that Miller's and Monroe's relationship hit difficulties, and he later said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life. Monroe was taking drugs to help her sleep and other drugs to help her wake up, arriving on the set late, and having trouble remembering her lines. Huston was unaware that Miller and Monroe were having problems in their private life. He recalled later, "I was impertinent enough to say to Arthur that to allow her to take drugs of any kind was criminal and utterly irresponsible. Shortly after that I realized that she wouldn't listen to Arthur at all; he had no say over her actions."

Shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, Miller and Monroe divorced after five years of marriage. Nineteen months later, on August 5, 1962, Monroe died of a likely drug overdose. Huston, who had also directed her in her first major role in The Asphalt Jungle in 1950, and who had seen her rise to stardom, put the blame for her death on her doctors as opposed to the stresses of being a star: "The girl was an addict of sleeping pills and she was made so by the God-damn doctors. It had nothing to do with the Hollywood set-up."

1964–2004: Later career
In 1964, After the Fall was produced, and is said to be a deeply personal view of Miller's experiences during his marriage to Monroe. It reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan; they collaborated on the script and direction. It opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, Maggie, on stage. Robert Brustein, in a review in the New Republic, called After the Fall "a three and one half hour breach of taste, a confessional autobiography of embarrassing explicitness ... There is a misogynistic strain in the play which the author does not seem to recognize. ... He has created a shameless piece of tabloid gossip, an act of exhibitionism which makes us all voyeurs ... a wretched piece of dramatic writing." That year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy. In 1965, he was elected the first American president of PEN International, a position which he held for four years. A year later, he organized the 1966 PEN congress in New York City. He also wrote the penetrating family drama The Price, produced in 1968. It was his most successful play since Death of a Salesman.

In 1968, Miller attended the Democratic National Convention as a delegate for Eugene McCarthy. In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers. Throughout the 1970s, he spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In the Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise, were critical and commercial failures.

Miller was an unusually articulate commentator on his own work. In 1978, he published a collection of his Theater Essays, edited by Robert A. Martin and with a foreword by Miller. Highlights of the collection included Miller's introduction to his Collected Plays, his reflections on the theory of tragedy, comments on the McCarthy Era, and pieces arguing for a publicly supported theater. Reviewing this collection in the Chicago Tribune, Studs Terkel remarked, "In reading [the Theater Essays] ... you are exhilaratingly aware of a social critic, as well as a playwright, who knows what he's talking about."

In 1983, Miller traveled to China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing. It was a success in China and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experiences in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was adapted into a television film starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. The film was broadcast on CBS, and garnered an audience viewership of 25 million. In late 1987, Miller's autobiographical work, Timebends, was published. Before it was published, it was well known that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; however, in the book, he wrote extensively in detail about his experiences with Monroe.

During the early 1990s, Miller wrote three new plays: The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). In 1996, a film adaptation of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Scofield, Bruce Davison and Winona Ryder was released. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay.

Mr. Peters' Connections was staged Off-Broadway in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The 1999 revival ran for 274 performances at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, starring Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman. Once again, it was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

In 1993, Miller received the National Medal of Arts. He was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for a Master American Dramatist in 1998. In 2001, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, "On Politics and the Art of Acting", analyzed political events (including the U.S. presidential election of 2000) in terms of the "arts of performance". It drew attacks from some conservatives such as Jay Nordlinger, who called it "a disgrace"; and George Will, who argued that Miller was not a legitimate "scholar".

In October 1999, Miller received The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, given annually to "a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life". In 2001, he received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. On May 1, 2002, he received Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama". Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 78. The following year, Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.

In December 2004, 89-year-old Miller announced that he had been in love with 34-year-old minimalist painter Agnes Barley and had been living with her at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture, opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004, with one character said to be based on Barley. It was reportedly based on his experience during the filming of The Misfits, though Miller insisted the play was a work of fiction with independent characters that were no more than composite shadows of history.

Marriages and family

In June 1956, Miller left his first wife, Mary Slattery, whom he had married in 1940, and wed film star Marilyn Monroe. They met in 1951, had a brief affair, and remained in contact. Monroe had just turned 30 when they married; she never had a real family of her own and was eager to join the family of her new husband.

Monroe began to reconsider her career and the fact that trying to manage it made her feel helpless. She admitted to Miller, "I hate Hollywood. I don't want it any more. I want to live quietly in the country and just be there when you need me. I can't fight for myself any more." Monroe converted to Judaism to "express her loyalty and get close to both Miller and his parents", writes biographer Jeffrey Meyers. She told her close friend, Susan Strasberg: "I can identify with the Jews. Everybody's always out to get them, no matter what they do, like me." Soon after Monroe converted, Egypt banned all of her movies. Away from Hollywood and the culture of celebrity, Monroe's life became more normal; she began cooking, keeping house, and giving Miller more attention and affection than he had been used to.

Later that year, Miller was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Monroe accompanied him. In her personal notes, she wrote about her worries during this period: "I am so concerned about protecting Arthur. I love him—and he is the only person—human being I have ever known that I could love not only as a man to which I am attracted to practically out of my senses—but he is the only person—as another human being that I trust as much as myself..."

Monroe obtained a "Mexican divorce" from Miller in January 1961.

In February 1962, Miller married photographer Inge Morath, who had worked as a photographer documenting the production of The Misfits. The first of their two children, Rebecca, was born September 15, 1962. Their son Daniel was born with Down syndrome in November 1966. Against his wife's wishes, Miller had him institutionalized, first at a home for infants in New York City, then at the Southbury Training School in Connecticut. Though Morath visited Daniel often, Miller never visited him at the school and rarely spoke of him. Miller and Inge remained together until her death in 2002. Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, is said to have visited Daniel frequently and to have persuaded Miller to meet with him.

Death
Miller died on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman) at age 89 of bladder cancer and heart failure, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He had been in hospice care at his sister's apartment in New York since his release from hospital the previous month. He was surrounded by his companion (the painter Agnes Barley), family, and friends. His body was interred at Roxbury Center Cemetery in Roxbury.

Within hours of her father's death, Rebecca Miller, who had been consistently opposed to the relationship with Barley, ordered her to vacate the home she shared with Arthur.

Legacy
Miller's writing career spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death, he was considered one of the 20th century's greatest dramatists. After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to him, some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage, and Broadway theatres darkened their lights in a show of respect. Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan, opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theater in the world that bears his name.

Miller's letters, notes, drafts and other papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Miller is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. He was inducted in 1979.

In 1993, he received the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech.

In 2017, his daughter, Rebecca Miller, a writer and filmmaker, completed a documentary about her father's life, Arthur Miller: Writer.

Minor planet 3769 Arthurmiller is named after him.

In the 2022 Netflix film Blonde, Miller was portrayed by Adrien Brody.

Foundation
The Arthur Miller Foundation was founded to honor the legacy of Miller and his New York City Public School education. Its mission is "Promoting increased access and equity to theater arts education in our schools and increasing the number of students receiving theater arts education as an integral part of their academic curriculum." Its other initiatives include certification of new theater teachers and their placement in public schools, increasing the number of theater teachers in the system from the current estimate of 180 teachers in 1800 schools, supporting professional development of all certified theater teachers, and providing teaching artists, cultural partners, physical spaces, and theater ticket allocations for students. The foundation's primary purpose is to provide arts education in the New York City school system. Its current chancellor is Carmen Farina, a prominent proponent of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The Master Arts Council includes Alec Baldwin, Ellen Barkin, Bradley Cooper, Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Kushner, Julianne Moore, Michael Moore, Liam Neeson, David O. Russell, and Liev Schreiber. Miller's son-in-law, Daniel Day-Lewis, has served on the current board of directors since 2016.

The foundation celebrated Miller's 100th birthday with a one-night performance of his seminal works in November 2015.

The Arthur Miller Foundation currently supports a pilot program in theater and film at the public school Quest to Learn, in partnership with the Institute of Play. The model is being used as an in-school elective theater class and lab. Its objective is to create a sustainable theater education model to disseminate to teachers at professional development workshops.

Archive
Miller donated thirteen boxes of his earliest manuscripts to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1961 and 1962. This collection included the original handwritten notebooks and early typed drafts for Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons, and other works. In January, 2018, the Ransom Center announced the acquisition of the remainder of the Miller archive, totaling over 200 boxes. The full archive opened in November, 2019.

Literary and public criticism
Christopher Bigsby wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005. The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller "bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement".

In his book Trinity of Passion, author Alan M. Wald conjectures that Miller was "a member of a writer's unit of the Communist Party around 1946," using the pseudonym Matt Wayne, and editing a drama column in the magazine The New Masses.

In 1999, the writer Christopher Hitchens attacked Miller for comparing the Monica Lewinsky investigation to the Salem witch hunt. Miller had asserted a parallel between the examination of physical evidence on Lewinsky's dress and the examinations of women's bodies for signs of the "Devil's Marks" in Salem. Hitchens scathingly disputed the parallel. In his memoir, Hitch-22, Hitchens bitterly noted that Miller, despite his prominence as a left-wing intellectual, had failed to support author Salman Rushdie during the Iranian fatwa involving The Satanic Verses.

Stage plays

 * No Villain (1936)
 * They Too Arise (1937, based on No Villain)
 * Honors at Dawn (1938, based on They Too Arise)
 * The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on They Too Arise)
 * The Great Disobedience (1938)
 * Listen My Children (1939, with Norman Rosten)
 * The Golden Years (1940)
 * The Half-Bridge (1943)
 * The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944)
 * All My Sons (1947)
 * Death of a Salesman (1949)
 * An Enemy of the People (1950, adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People)
 * The Crucible (1953)
 * A View from the Bridge (1955)
 * A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)
 * After the Fall (1964)
 * Incident at Vichy (1964)
 * The Price (1968)
 * The Reason Why (1970)
 * Fame (one-act, 1970; revised for television 1978)
 * The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
 * Up from Paradise (1974)
 * The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)
 * The American Clock (1980)
 * Playing for Time (television play, 1980)
 * Elegy for a Lady (short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror)
 * Some Kind of Love Story (short play, 1982, second part of Two Way Mirror)
 * I Think About You a Great Deal (1986)
 * Playing for Time (stage version, 1985)
 * I Can't Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
 * Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
 * The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)
 * The Last Yankee (1993)
 * Broken Glass (1994)
 * Mr. Peters' Connections (1998)
 * Resurrection Blues (2002)
 * Finishing the Picture (2004)

Radio plays

 * The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man (1941)
 * Joel Chandler Harris (1941)
 * The Battle of the Ovens (1942)
 * Thunder from the Mountains (1942)
 * I Was Married in Bataan (1942)
 * That They May Win (1943)
 * Listen for the Sound of Wings (1943)
 * Bernardine (1944)
 * I Love You (1944)
 * Grandpa and the Statue (1944)
 * The Philippines Never Surrendered (1944)
 * The Guardsman (1944, based on Ferenc Molnár's play)
 * The Story of Gus (1947)

Screenplays

 * The Hook (1947)
 * All My Sons (1948)
 * Let's Make Love (1960)
 * The Misfits (1961)
 * Death of a Salesman (1985)
 * Everybody Wins (1990)
 * The Crucible (1996)

Assorted fiction

 * Focus (novel, 1945)
 * "The Misfits" (short story, published in Esquire, October 1957)
 * I Don't Need You Anymore (short stories, 1967)
 * "Homely Girl: A Life" (short story, 1992, published in UK as "Plain Girl: A Life" 1995)
 * Presence: Stories (2007) (short stories include "The Bare Manuscript", "Beavers", "The Performance", and "Bulldog")

Non-fiction

 * Situation Normal (1944) is based on his experiences researching the war correspondence of Ernie Pyle.
 * In Russia (1969), the first of three books created with his photographer wife Inge Morath, offers Miller's impressions of Russia and Russian society.
 * In the Country (1977), with photographs by Morath and text by Miller, provides insight into how Miller spent his time in Roxbury, Connecticut, and profiles of his various neighbors.
 * Chinese Encounters (1979) is a travel journal with photographs by Morath. It depicts the Chinese society in the state of flux which followed the end of the Cultural Revolution. Miller discusses the hardships of many writers, professors, and artists during Mao Zedong's regime.
 * Salesman in Beijing (1984) details Miller's experiences with the 1983 Beijing People's Theatre production of Death of a Salesman. He describes directing a Chinese cast in an American play.
 * Timebends: A Life, Methuen London (1987) ISBN 0-413-41480-9. Miller's autobiography.
 * On Politics and the Art of Acting, Viking 2001 {ISBN 0-670-030-422} an 85-page essay about the thespian skills in American politics, comparing FDR, JFK, Reagan, Clinton.

Collections

 * Abbotson, Susan C. W. (ed.), Arthur Miller: Collected Essays, Penguin 2016 ISBN 978-0-14-310849-8
 * Kushner, Tony, ed. Arthur Miller, Collected Plays 1944–1961 (Library of America, 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-91-4.
 * Martin, Robert A. (ed.), "The theater essays of Arthur Miller", foreword by Arthur Miller. NY: Viking Press, 1978 ISBN 0-14-004903-7

title: Arthur Miller


text:
User talk:AnonymousCoward

I often post anonymously on Wikipedia. As far as I know, Wikipedia neither formally nor informally discourages anonymity. I'm sure I've been responsible for my share of drivel, and (I hope) for my share of insight.

I believe that what people (including myself) have to say is more important than who happens to be saying it. (2+3=5 is true whether said by Gandhi or Hitler, 2+3=7 false likewise.) -- AnonymousCoward

 * Agreed. If you're the same individual whom I've been tracking as of late (on Tbc/Abraham Lincoln, for instance), rest assured that your contributions are welcomed and appreciated. Since you're anonymous, you don't have to feel obliged to take the tongue-in-cheek label of "coward" personally. :-) It's just that I like to keep the conversations straight by marking anonymous comments as such versus the comments of Wikipedians who have signed in. <>< tbc

Well, I normally try to be "pleasant and/or helpful though anonymous"".

Also, I believe that some postings have been falsely attributed. Let's keep our eyes open for the possibilities of honest misattributions as well as deliberate attempts to be annoying.

Welcome to Wikipedia. Please don't post nonsense articles like Bryce Anderson. -- Zoe

title: User talk:AnonymousCoward


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Anton Diabelli

Anton (or Antonio) Diabelli (5 September 1781 – 8 April 1858) was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.

Early life
Diabelli was born in Mattsee in Austria, then in the Archbishopric of Salzburg. A musical child, he sang in the boys' choir at Salzburg Cathedral where he is believed to have taken music lessons with Michael Haydn. By the age of 19 Diabelli had already composed several important compositions including six masses.

Diabelli was trained to enter the priesthood and in 1800 joined the monastery at Raitenhaslach, Bavaria. He remained there until 1803, when Bavaria closed all its monasteries.

Career
In 1803 Diabelli moved to Vienna and began teaching piano and guitar and found work as a proofreader for a music publisher. During this period he learned the music publishing business while continuing to compose. In 1809 he composed his comic opera, Adam in der Klemme. In 1817 he started a music publishing business and in 1818 he formed a partnership with Pietro Cappi to create the music publishing firm of Cappi & Diabelli.

Cappi & Diabelli became well known by arranging popular pieces so they could be played by amateurs at home. A master of promotion, Diabelli selected widely-accessible music such as famous opera tune arrangements, dance music and popular new comic theatre songs.

The firm soon established a reputation in more serious music circles by championing the works of Franz Schubert. Diabelli recognized the composer's potential and became the first to publish Schubert's work with "Erlkönig" in 1821. Diabelli's firm continued to publish Schubert's work until 1823 when an argument between Cappi and Schubert terminated their business. The following year Diabelli and Cappi parted ways, Diabelli launching a new publishing house, Diabelli & Co., in 1824. Following Schubert's early death in 1828 Diabelli purchased a large portion of the composer's massive musical estate from Schubert's brother Ferdinand. As Schubert had hundreds of unpublished works, Diabelli's firm was able to publish "new" Schubert works for more than 30 years after the composer's death.

Diabelli's publishing house expanded throughout his life, before he retired in 1851, leaving it under the control of Carl Anton Spina. When Diabelli died in 1858 Spina changed the firm’s name to “C.A. Spina Vormals Diabelli” and published much music by Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss. In 1872 the firm was taken over by Friedrich Schreiber and in 1876 it merged with the firm of August Cranz who bought the company in 1879 and ran it under his name.

Diabelli died in Vienna at the age of 76.

Compositions
Diabelli composed a number of well-known Classical works, including an operetta called Adam in der Klemme, several masses, songs and numerous piano and classical guitar pieces. Numerically his guitar pieces form the largest part of his works. His pieces for piano four hands are popular.

Diabelli's composition Pleasures of Youth: Six Sonatinas is a collection of six sonatinas depicting a struggle between unknown opposing forces. This is suggested by the sharp and frequent change in dynamics from forte to piano. When forte is indicated the pianist is meant to evoke a sense of wickedness, thus depicting the antagonist. In contrast the markings of piano represent the protagonist.

Diabelli Variations
The composition for which Diabelli is now best known was actually written as part of an adventuring story. In 1819, as a promotional idea, he decided to try to publish a volume of variations on a "patriotic" waltz he had penned expressly for this purpose, with one variation by every important Austrian composer living at the time, as well as several significant non-Austrians. The combined contributions would be published in an anthology called Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Fifty-one composers responded with pieces, including Beethoven, Schubert, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (jun.), Moritz, Prince of Dietrichstein, Heinrich Eduard Josef Baron von Lannoy, Ignaz Franz Baron von Mosel, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Simon Sechter, and the eight-year-old Franz Liszt (although it seems Liszt was not invited personally, but his teacher Czerny arranged for him to be involved). Czerny was also enlisted to write a coda. Beethoven, however, instead of providing just one variation, provided 33, and his formed Part I of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. They constitute what is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Beethoven's piano pieces and as the greatest set of variations of their time, and are generally known simply as the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. The other 50 variations were published as Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.

Cultural references
A sonatina of Diabelli's, presumably Sonatina in F major, Op. 168, No. 1 (I: Moderato cantabile), provides the title and a motif for the French novella Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras.

Published music and further reading

 * Anton Diabelli's guitar works – a thematic catalogue with an introduction; Doctoral Thesis by Jukka Savijoki (Sibelius Academy; 1996)
 * Anton Diabelli's Guitar Works: A Thematic Catalogue by Jukka Savijoki (Editions Orphée)
 * Rischel & Birket-Smith's Collection of guitar music Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Denmark
 * Boije Collection The Music Library of Sweden
 * www.karadar.com/Dictionary/diabelli.html
 * Free scores at the Mutopia Project
 * Free scores at the Mutopia Project
 * Free scores at the Mutopia Project

title: Anton Diabelli