By Ron B. Davis Jr., Georgetown University
As the Cold War escalated in the 1950s, yet another power lab was emerging a world away, this time in Dubna, Russia. Thus, now, with the Americans, Swedish, and Russians all equally equipped to pursue the prestige of discovering a new element, a bitter cold war contest known as ‘The Transfermium Wars’ began.
Mendelevium
With a massive head start, the American Manhattan project produced and used nuclear weapons years before the Soviets had a successful nuclear test in 1949. Much like the Chicago research facilities ultimately became Argonne National Lab, so did a Soviet nuclear research lab in Dubna, Russia, become the Joint Institute for Nuclear Physics Research—complete with the nuclear reactors and cyclotron technology needed to synthesize elements larger than fermium. This marked their entry into the trans-fermium wars.
In 1955, Glenn Seaborg and his colleague Albert Ghiorso, in their quest to continue expanding the periodic table, successfully produced element 101, creating just 17 atoms of the newest heavy actinoid.
Their discovery went uncontested by the competing labs emerging in Sweden and Russia. Although element 101 was discovered in America, Thompson, Ghiorso and Seaborg decided to give their new element a Russian namesake—Dimitri Mendeleev. Choosing a Russian namesake for an American-discovered element early in the cold war was a bold suggestion. But this would prove an important olive branch to offer, since each side knew that the other would almost certainly be necessary to verify findings going forward. Mendelevium may have created just enough good will and cooperation among competing labs to balance the strong desire each had to be the first to discovery.
The Swedish Group
With the discovery of mendelevium, the Berkeley team grabbed what one might call low-hanging fruit. They had made just a few atoms of element 101 with the time-tested method of bombarding the most recently discovered element with fast-moving helium nuclei.
To make the next two elements—elements 102 and 103—by alpha bombardment seemed virtually impossible. Only picograms of fermium existed to make targets for element 102, and for element 103 only 17 atoms of the target mendelevium, had ever been made, using the already rare element einsteinium.
Fortunately, cyclotron technology had progressed rapidly in the 1950s. The Swedish group found they could accelerate oxygen ions with 8 protons to sufficient energies to overcome the coulombic barrier and promote fusion. So, the oxygen projectile should deliver eight protons, and that made it possible to use the much more available element 94, plutonium as a target to produce element 102. Having obtained samples of the much more available plutonium from England in 1956, the Swedish team set their sights on another chance at finally getting their namesake Nobel immortalized on the table, this time at position 102.
‘Nobelievium’
In 1957, the Swedes conducted their experiment, crashing ions of element 8 into element 94 plutonium. When they did, they observed alpha radiation of a previously unobserved energy, one of the hallmarks of a new element forming, then almost instantly decaying radioactively.
Already slighted once, over their claim to element 100, they rushed to press with their discovery in the hopes of securing their prize of immortality on the periodic table, at position 102 instead.
Their data were crude and what some might consider only preliminary. Seaborg and Ghiorso tried to replicate the Swedish results with their own cyclotron and failed. So, the Berkeley group privately quipped that the Swedish team should name their element ‘nobelievium’ instead.
This article comes directly from content in the video series Understanding the Periodic Table. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
The Achilles’ Heel
Convinced that the Swedish discovery claim was not supported, the Berkeley team continued their own search for element 102. Ghiorso pressed his advantage and used the collision of element-6 carbon with element-96 curium to form element 102. He had created a sort of conveyer belt of foil that would collect and move the fermium formed from the alpha decay of element 102 into a separate compartment where it could be more easily detected.
The system also used a stream of helium to remove smaller products formed from the fission products produced from most of the carbon projectiles. This would prove to be its Achilles’ heel. When a valve was improperly set by Ghiorso himself, the helium failed to flow and finally burst free of the device, releasing a cloud of radioactive curium and fission byproducts into the labs at Berkeley. The building was evacuated within minutes, resulting in zero loss of life.
Element 103
But possibly because of this accident, Ghiorso decided too much time had been lost. Naming rights for element 102 were ceded to the Swedish group. It was time to forge ahead to element 103, the final actinoid, before someone else got there first.
Element 103 was produced by the Berkeley lab in 1961. Appropriately, it was named for Ernest Lawrence, another Berkeley scientist and the inventor of the cyclotron, without which this element could never have been made.
The discovery of the nine trans-plutonic actinoids had taken all of fifteen years, and was a boon for the American nuclear research program, after the Manhattan Project.
The Transfermium Wars
But a clash with an upstart Swedish lab over the bragging rights for the elements that would become fermium and nobelium—along with an emerging Russian nuclear program—produced the first rumblings of what would later be referred to as ‘The Transfermium Wars’, a period in which several global laboratories would compete relentlessly for the prestige and naming rights that came with discovery of new elements.
As of 1961, all that remained of row seven of the table were the d-block and p-block elements, and the Berkeley team seemed poised to ride their success to the far end of the table. But the upstart Russians, having already detonated their own hydrogen bombs and created their own heavy-element program, were about to come crashing onto the scene.
Common Questions about Element 101 and the Beginnings of the Transfermium Wars
In 1955, Glenn Seaborg and Albert Ghiorso, in their quest to continue expanding the periodic table, successfully produced element 101, creating just 17 atoms of the newest heavy actinoid.
Element 103 was produced by the Berkeley lab in 1961. Appropriately, it was named for Ernest Lawrence, another Berkeley scientist and the inventor of the cyclotron, without which this element could never have been made.
‘The Transfermium Wars‘ was a period in which several global laboratories would compete relentlessly for the prestige and naming rights that came with discovery of new elements.
