Transuranium elements (also known as transuranic elements) are the chemical elements beyond atomic number 92. Of the elements with atomic numbers 1 to 92, all but four (43-technetium, 61-promethium, 85-astatine, and 87-francium) occur in nature. All of the elements with higher atomic numbers, however, have had to be produced artificially.
Ihe majority of the transuranium elements were produced by two groups:
- A group at the University of California, Berkeley, under three different leaders:
- Edward M. McMillan, first to produce a transuranium element:
- Glenn T. Seaborg, next in order, who produced:
- 96. curium, Cm, named for Pierre and Marie Curie, famous scientists who separated out the first radioactive elements.
- 98. californium, Cf, named for the state of California, where the university is located.
- Albert Ghiorso, who had been on Seaborg's team when they produced curium, berkelium, and californium, took over as director to produce:
- 99. einsteinium, Es, named for the great physicist Albert Einstein.
- 100. fermium, Fm, named for Enrico Fermi, the physicist who produced the first controlled chain reaction.
- 101. mendelevium, Md, named for the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, one of the two men who developed the periodic table of the chemical elements.
- 102. nobelium, No (see below).
- 103. lawrencium, Lr, named for Ernest O. Lawrence, a physicist best known for his development of the cyclotron, and the person for whom the Lawrence Laboratories (which hosted the creation of these transuranium elements) were named.
- 104. rutherfordium, Rf, named for Ernest Rutherford, who was responsible for the concept of the atomic nucleus.
- 105. An element for which the Berkeley group proposed the name hahnium, after Otto Hahn, the first chemist to detect evidence of nuclear fission, but which is now named dubnium, Db (see below).
- 106. seaborgium, Sg, named for Glenn T. Seaborg. This name caused controversy because Seaborg was still alive, but eventually became accepted by international chemists.
- A group at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (Society for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany, under Peter Armbruster, who prepared:
- 107. bohrium, Bh, named for the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, important in the elucidation of the structure of the atom. The group had first suggested the name nielsbohrium, but the ultimately accepted name is bohrium.
- 108. hassium, Hs, named for the Latin form of the name of Hessen, the German Bundesland where this work was performed.
- 109. meitnerium, Mt, named for Lise Meitner, a German physicist who was one of the earliest scientists to become involved in the study of nuclear fission.
- 110. This element has not yet been given a name.
- 111. This element has not yet been given a name.
- 112. This element has not yet been given a name.
Two other groups had worked on the preparation of transuranium elements, but their original reports have since been discredited:
- A group at the Nobel Institute in Sweden, which claimed to have produced element 102, and named it nobelium, in honor of Alfred Nobel, inventer of dynamite and donor of the endowment for the Nobel Prizes. The name "nobelium" was ultimately agreed upon, though their production is no longer accepted.
- A group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research' in Dubna in Russia (then the Soviet Union) who claimed to have produced:
- 104, which they named kurchatovium after the Soviet chemist Ivan Kurchatov.
- 105. Although their claim is not accepted, the name dubnium is now official for this element, named for the city where they worked.
- 106.
- 107.