Rutherfordium

The discovery of rutherfordium took place in a lab, when it was produced as a part of an experiment. The where and when has not been settled once and for all. In 1964, workers at the Joint Nuclear Research Institute at Dubna (U.S.S.R.) bombarded plutonium-242 with ions of neon-22, forming what they believed to be atoms of rutherfordium-260 and four free neutrons. Researcher at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California (now known as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) was unable to confirm the results when they tried in 1969. They did themselves succeed in creating rutherfordium-257, rutherfordium-258, rutherfordium-259 and rutherfordium-261 by bombarding atoms of californium-248 and californium-249 with ions of carbon-12 and carbon-13 [4].

Named after the chemist Ernest Rutherford [2]. From 1969 to 1997, there was a dispute whether to call the element rutherfordium or kurchatorium (Ku) after Igor Kurchatov the head of the Russian nuclear research programme [2]. The dispute was ended in 1997, when IUPAC decided on calling the element rutherfordium [1].