What Is Seaborgium

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• published: 21 Jan 2011
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Discovery Information Who: members of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, workers of the Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore Laboratories When: 1974 Where: Dubna, USSR / Berkeley California Name Origin For Glenn Seaborg, part of the Dubna group that first synthesized this element. "Seaborgium" in different languages. Sources Seaborgium is a synthetic element that is not present in the environment at all. The first samples were made by fusing 249Cf with 18O. Uses None. History Element 106 was discovered almost simultaneously by two different laboratories. In June 1974, an American research team led by Albert Ghiorso at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley reported creating an isotope with mass number 263 and a half-life of 1.0 s, and in September 1974, a Soviet team led by G. N. Flerov at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna reported producing an isotope with mass number 259 and a half-life of 0.48 s. Because their work was independently confirmed first, the Americans suggested the name seaborgium to honor the American chemist Glenn T. Seaborg credited as a member of the American team along with Ghiorso, J. M. Nitschke, J. R. Alonso, C. T. Alonso, M. Nurmia, E. Kenneth Hulet, and R. W. Lougheed in recognition of his participation in the discovery of several other actinoids. The name selected by the team became controversial. An international committee decided in 1992 that the Berkeley and Dubna laboratories should share credit for the discovery. An element naming controversy erupted and as a result IUPAC adopted unnilhexium as a temporary, systematic element name. In 1994 a committee of IUPAC recommended that element 106 be named rutherfordium and adopted a rule that no element can be named after a living person. This ruling was fiercely objected to by the American Chemical Society. Critics pointed out that a precedent had been set in the naming of einsteinium during Albert Einstein's life. In 1997, as part of a compromise involving elements 104 to 108, the name seaborgium for element 106 was recognized internationally.