Fermium

Notable characteristics

Only small amounts of fermium have ever been produced or isolated. Thus relatively little is known about its chemical properties. Only the (III) transuranic element.

History

Fermium (after Glenn T. Seaborg (from the Radiation Laboratory and Department of Chemistry of the University of California), Martin H. Studier, P.R. Fields, Sherman M. Fried, H. Diamond, J.F. Mech, G.L. Pyle, John R. Huizenga, A. Hirsch, W.M. Manning (from the Argonne National Laboratory), C.I. Browne, H. Louise Smith, and R.W. Spence (from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory). Samples of sea coral impacted from the first thermonuclear explosion of November 1952 were used.

All these findings were kept secret until 1955 due to Cold War tensions, however. In late 1953 and early 1954 a team from the Nobel Institute of Physics in Stockholm bombarded a ²³⁸protons (in other words, element ²⁵⁰100). The Nobel team did not claim discovery but the isotope they produced was later positively identified as ²⁵⁰Fm.

Isotopes

17 u (²⁴²Fm) to 259.101 u (²⁵⁹Fm).

References

• Los Alamos National Laboratory - Fermium
• Guide to the Elements - Revised Edition, Albert Stwertka, (Oxford University Press; 1998) ISBN 0-19-508083-1
• It's Elemental - Fermium