A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brief History of Element Discovery,

Synthesis, and Analysis, by Glen W. Watson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis

Author: Glen W. Watson

Release Date: March 13, 2010 [EBook #31624]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELEMENT DISCOVERY ***

Produced by Mark C. Orton, Erica Pfister-Altschul and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

A Brief History

of

ELEMENT DISCOVERY,

SYNTHESIS, and ANALYSIS

Glen W. Watson

September 1963

LAWRENCE RADIATION LABORATORY

University of California

Berkeley and Livermore

Operating under contract with the

United States Atomic Energy Commission

Radioactive elements: alpha particles from a speck of radium leave tracks on a photographic emulsion. (Occhialini and Powell, 1947)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

ELEMENT DISCOVERY, SYNTHESIS,

AND ANALYSIS

It is well known that the number of elements has grown from four in the days of the Greeks to 103 at present, but the change in methods needed for their discovery is not so well known. Up until 1939, only 88 naturally occurring elements had been discovered. It took a dramatic modern technique (based on Ernest O. Lawrence's Nobel-prize-winning atom smasher, the cyclotron) to synthesize the most recently discovered elements. Most of these recent discoveries are directly attributed to scientists working under the Atomic Energy Commission at the University of California's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley.

But it is apparent that our present knowledge of the elements stretches back into history: back to England's Ernest Rutherford, who in 1919 proved that, occasionally, when an alpha particle from radium strikes a nitrogen atom, either a proton or a hydrogen nucleus is ejected; to the Dane Niels Bohr and his 1913 idea of electron orbits; to a once unknown Swiss patent clerk, Albert Einstein, and his now famous theories; to Poland's Marie Curie who, in 1898, with her