How the Elements Got Their Names | Distillations
“There are bright spots. Some of the vignettes, such as that of cobalt, point us to stories we likely would never have discovered on our own. Wothers also provides surprises about what we assume we know. Take polonium, one of the radioactive elements discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. It’s named for Poland, yes? Marie Curie (née Maria Skłodowska) was Polish born; of course she would name an element she discovered after her home country.”
Throwback Thursday |The Transfermium Wars: Scientific Brawling And Name Calling During the Cold War | Science History Institute
“The naming of elements 95, americium, through 101, mendelevium, went uncontested. Trouble began to simmer in 1957 when a collaboration among three research institutions—the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the Harwell Laboratory in Britain, and the Nobel Institute for Physics in Sweden—announced the creation of element 102. They proposed the name nobelium, which was swiftly accepted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the international body in charge of christening new elements.”