Darmstadt

A city of about 160,000 people in Hesse has its name stamped permanently on the periodic table.

The team led by S. Hofmann at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt made the first atoms in November 1994 by fusing lead-208 with nickel-62. The whole discovery rested on a handful of atoms that survived for fractions of a second. IUPAC approved the name darmstadtium in 2003, nearly a decade after the experiment.