Showdown at the Periodic Table

Following the dawn of nuclear physics, scientists realized that elements with large atomic numbers could be created either by nuclear reactions or by colliding two atoms together. The first element to be discovered via artificial creation was element 43, which was produced accidentally after foil made from element 42 (molybdenum) was irradiated. It was soon named technetium in honor of its artificial creation. In the early 1940s, Elements 93 and 94 were created, and were named neptunium and plutonium in order to create a pattern of elements named after planets starting with uranium. Around this time, the Manhattan project was formed to develop the first nuclear weapons, which made this research a part of the national interest. Over the next 7 years, elements 95-101 were detected.

However, the Soviet Union became a nuclear country in 1949, and sought to develop its own nuclear research program. In 1956, prominent Soviet physicists established the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), which had the equipment necessary to create new elements. This thus brought the race to create new elements firmly into the Cold War.

As their discoveries were undisputedly made by American scientists, their proposed names for elements 95-101 were accepted without issue. However, Glenn Seaborg, leader of the element discovery team, had to ask the government whether naming element 101 mendelevium after the Russian formulator of the periodic table was acceptable, which would be a sign of the national tensions which would come to define the next 40 years of element discovery.

The secrecy of nuclear experiments, combined with the difficulty of confirming an element’s presence, meant that it would often take months for a team to announce they had discover an new element. As a result, the Soviet and American teams would often claim to discover elements at around the same time. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) gave priority to the discoverer of an element when deciding on a name, and the American scientists used the assumption that they had discovered elements 104 and 105 to propose the names rutherfordium and hahnium after pioneering nuclear physicists Ernest Rutherford and Otto Hahn. However, the Soviets believed that the Americans were being far too hasty with their announcements, and counteracted the American team by instead proposing the names kurchatovium and nielsbohrium after Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov and Danish atomic pioneer Niels Bohr.

Element 106 was named seaborgium after Glenn Seaborg, a decision which was particularly controversial given that Seaborg was still alive and naming elements after living people was discouraged by the IUPAC. However, the Soviets never proposed a name for the element, perhaps because they retracted any claim to have discovered it in 1984.

During the 1970s the IUPAC attempted to resolve the dispute, and suggested that elements only be named 5 years after the first report of their discovery. However, the American and Soviet scientists largely rejected this proposal; a 1991 report by the Soviet team countered that the IUPAC “have never been and are not now experts in these fields of science,” referring to nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry. However, by 1985 a Transfermium Working Group (referring to elements beyond fermium, element 100) was formed to resolve the issues of of discoveries and names, and in 1991, the first formal criteria for determining discovery of a transfermium element were established. The Russian team (the Soviet Union collapsed around this time) was satisfied by the report, but the Americans objected to the categorization of element 104 as a joint discovery between the Soviet and American teams, as they believed they deserved sole credit.

The name issue was not resolved either, and a 1992 suggestion from the German team which discovered elements 107-109 went nowhere. In 1994, the IUPAC made its first ruling on the names for the transfermium elements, which used many of the American, Russian, and German names but transferred many of the names to different elements than were originally proposed. For example, the name hahniumwas transferred to element 108, and the name rutherfordium was given to element 106. This did not satisfy the Americans, who wanted the rights to name all the elements they discovered, and insisted on keeping the name seaborgium. The American Chemical Society refused to accept the report, and argued that giving the names hahnium and rutherfordium to different elements would create confusion. A 1995 compromise from the IUPAC, in which all American proposals but seaborgium were dropped, was rejected for shaking up the names of other elements too much.

In 1997, the IUPAC finally reached an arrangement which was agreed to by all sides. The American names for elements 103, 104, and 106 were accepted, while element 105 was given the name dubnium in honor of the city where the JINR is located in Russia, which had previously been given to element 104 in the 1994 proposal. The German names for elements 107-109 were accepted, though nielsbohrium was shortened to bohrium. The Russians were somewhat bitter about kurchatovium being rejected, while the Americans, who had used “hahnium” for many years, were also unhappy, but this perhaps goes to show that the agreement was truly fair. Also, the rejection of the name hahnium and the acceptance of the name meitnerium for element 109 was seen as posthumous justice for Lise Meitner, as despite being Otto Hahn’s collaborator, she did not get to share his 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission. (Hahnium cannot be used for another element now to avoid causing confusion with its former usage.)

Sources:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75813-8_5 (This is where I sourced much of my information from, and provides a more technical history of the discoveries of these elements.)