reshape data.frame

A late friday afternoon coding question.  I'm having a hard time  
thinking
of the correct search terms for what I want to do.

If I have a df like this:

a <-
data.frame(name=c(rep('a',10),rep('b', 
15)),year=c(1971:1980,1971:1985),amount=1:25)
  name year amount
1     a 1971      1
2     a 1972      2
3     a 1973      3
4     a 1974      4
5     a 1975      5
6     a 1976      6
7     a 1977      7
8     a 1978      8
9     a 1979      9
10    a 1980     10
11    b 1971     11
12    b 1972     12
13    b 1973     13
14    b 1974     14
15    b 1975     15
16    b 1976     16
17    b 1977     17
18    b 1978     18
19    b 1979     19
20    b 1980     20
21    b 1981     21
22    b 1982     22
23    b 1983     23
24    b 1984     24
25    b 1985     25

and I'd like to reshape it so it is like this:
X.1971 X.1972 X.1973 X.1974 X.1975 X.1976 X.1977 X.1978 X.1979 X.1980
X.1981
a      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      
10
NA
b     11     12     13     14     15     16     17     18     19      
20
21
 X.1982 X.1983 X.1984 X.1985
a     NA     NA     NA     NA
b     22     23     24     25

Thanks for the assist.

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