 Seaborg graduated from Jordan in 1929 at the top of his class and received a bachelor of arts ( AB ) degree in chemistry at the University of California , Los Angeles , in 1933 . He worked his way through school as a stevedore and a laboratory assistant at Firestone . Seaborg took his PhD in chemistry at the University of California , Berkeley , in 1937 with a doctoral thesis on the " Interaction of Fast Neutrons with Lead " , in which he coined the term " nuclear spallation " . 
