Nobelium is named after Alfred Nobel. The image features a Japanese ideograph (or virtue word) with various meanings including ‘master teacher’ and ‘noble’ - a pun on the origin of the element’s name. The background features imagery suggestive of particle ‘trails’ like those produced when radiation passes through a cloud chamber.

Fact Box

Uses

Nobelium has no uses outside research.

History

In 1957, the Nobel Institute of Physics in Stockholm announced isotope-253 which had been made by bombarding curium with carbon. Then in 1958, Albert Ghiorso at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) claimed isotope-254, also made by bombarding curium with carbon. These claims were challenged by the Russians.

In 1962-63, the Russian Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, based at Dubna, synthesised isotopes 252 to 256. Ghiorso still insisted his group were the first to discover element 102, and so began years of recrimination, finally ending in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists deciding in favour of the Russians being the discoverers.