berkelium
noun · first attested 1949
The discoverers picked the name as a deliberate echo of an older element named for a Swedish village.
Synthetic radioactive actinide element 97, symbol Bk.
37.8703°N -122.2681°W · Q484678
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1949
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Berkeley
- In English
berkelium
Stanley Thompson, Albert Ghiorso and Glenn Seaborg made element 97 in December 1949 at the University of California Radiation Laboratory. Seaborg noted that berkelium sat directly below terbium in the periodic table, so naming it for Berkeley mirrored terbium's debt to Ytterby. The bulk of the world's berkelium-249 is now bred in the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge, in quantities measured in milligrams.