For five years, Dr. B. Smith Hopkins, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Illinois, had been searching through a gathering of old friends and nodding acquaintances to discover one of ...

For new, human-made heavy elements on the periodic table, being “too ‘big’ for your own good” often means instability and a fleeting existence. The more protons and neutrons scientists squeeze ...

Creating new heavy elements is a faint bit like working a pinball machine; it takes a nice judgment of speed. Last week a group of University of California scientists led by Professor Glenn Seaborg ...