MAPPING THE ELEMENTS

Lottie Houghton (WHS)

Why are some elements named after places? Why are some named after scientists? Who decides what to name them? Since the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) was created in 1919, it has been used as the consulting body to approve names and symbols for new elements that have been discovered. For the name to be officially used and recognised it must be presented with sufficient evidence that the element has been created and then approved by the IUPAC council which can take up to five months or much longer if the name is highly contested by two distinguished parties. In most cases, elements are named after places, planets, minerals, countries, properties or scientists. Elements in the periodic table with lower atomic numbers which were discovered first, tend to be named after minerals such as Beryllium (Be) named after Beryl the mineral and Boron (B) after Borax or using the Latin and Greek derivatives for the elements. For example, Hydrogen (H) is hydro + gen = water forming, Oxygen (O) is oxy + gen = acid forming. Similarly, elements are named after their Greek or Latin words which describe their chemical properties, for example Argon (Ar) is names after argós which means idle, because it is very unreactive and Carbon (C) which is Latin for coal which is made of carbon. Elements which are after Uranium-92 (the last naturally occurring element), have to be synthesized, so these are usually the ones with more creative names. Elements 100-104, 106-7 are named after famous scientists, mainly Nobel prize winners such as Einstein, Curie, Bohr, Fermi and Rutherford, to honour these scientists’ work and dedication to chemistry and/or physics. All of the elements that have been named after famous scientists have been done posthumously by other people; so far no one has named an element after themselves. Elements named after astronomical bodies include: Helium (the Sun), Mercury (Mercury), Selenium (the Moon), tellurium (Earth), Cerium (Ceres), Plutonium (Pluto), Uranium (Uranus), Neptunium (Neptune) and Palladium (Pallas – an asteroid). These elements were named after planets and more specifically Greek and Roman gods of these planets. Uranium was named shortly after its planetary namesake was discovered in 1789, uranium, neptunium and plutonium occur consecutively in the periodic table as they do in the solar system’s order. Typically, if elements are named after specific places such as Berkelium, named after the University of California Berkeley, Dubnium after the Joint 2 Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, USSR or Darmstadtium, named after Darmstadt in Germany, which is home to the GSI Helmholtz centre for Heavy Ion research, this usually means that the element was first discovered or manufactured there. Especially considering elements which have a higher atomic number that 92 Uranium have to be man-made and manufactured under high temperatures and pressures which are only creatable in a lab environment such as in Dubna, Russia or UCA Berkeley or Darmstadt. If an institute has already named an element after itself, it can go further by naming newly discovered ones as their region or state, their country or continent. However, there was some debate about naming elements known as the Transfeminism Wars for elements 104-6 between USA and USSR scientists during the height of the Cold War. As competition to develop space programmes to get to the moon increased so did the competition to discover elements and name them after geographical location to show superiority of their technological innovation departments. Rutherfordium 106 was reportedly first discovered in the USSR in 1964 when neon-22 ions were fired at plutonium-242 which gave way to spontaneous fission. Subsequently but independently the University of California Berkeley also synthesized the same element 5 years later through a method of firing carbon-12 ions at californium-249. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna in the USSR wanted to name the element Kurchatovium (Ku) in honour of Igor Kurchatov who invented the Soviet atom bomb, however the Americans wanted to name it Rutherfordium (Rf), after Earnest Rutherford another nuclear physics pioneer, the American name was approved by the IUPAC committee after nearly 30 years of arguments. Meanwhile the Soviet scientists did not lose out as element 105 was named Dubnium after their geographical location as well as them having their chosen name for element 101 – Mendelevium. Elements are still being created today, even though their overall instability means they only exist for a fraction of a second, they still can be claimed with sufficient evidence by anyone who synthesises them. Recently elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 have been discovered, the naming process took about 13 years, 13 years, 6 years and 14 years respectively. They were named, Nihonium (after Japan, where it was synthesized), Moscovium (after Moscow where it was synthesized), Tennessine (after the state of Tennessee’s contributions to its discovery) and Oganesson (after Yuri Oganssium, a Russian pioneer in transactinide research). It has been said by the IUPAC that these four elements have completed the period table (as Oganesson is a noble gas). So, it is widely disputed if more elements can be created because the atoms may not get any heavier and even if they can whether governments or private companies will continue to fund this extremely

expensive ordeal for elements which are completely unstable and exist instantaneously before splitting into daughter nuclei with no real use. In conclusion the reason for naming elements after compounds is primarily where the element was discovered or named after the research institute where it was synthesized or its city, region, country or continent.

A map to illustrate the locations of the elements which have geographical locations in their names.