Russian postal stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of Georgy Flerov’s birth and the naming of element 114 after the laboratory named for him
18 August 2023
Flerovium is an artificially created element with atomic number 114 and symbol Fl. Flerovium isotopes have half-lives less than two seconds, although more stable forms have been theorized. Only some ninety flerovium atoms have been produced and detected, so the element obviously has no practical uses beyond research. It was first synthesized in 1998 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States.
The element is named after the Flerov* Laboratory of JINR. The laboratory itself is named for physicist Georgy Flerov (1913–90). Flerovium had been previously proposed as a name for a number of other elements, including element 102 (nobelium) before IUPAC approved it for element 114.
The proposed name, along with that of element 116 (livermorium), was announced at the closing ceremony of the International Year of Chemistry held in Brussels on 1 December 2011. The JINR’s press release about the naming of 2 December 2011 reads, in part:
With Professor Yuri Oganessian as spokesperson the collaborators have proposed the name flerovium (symbol Fl) for element number 114 and the name livermorium (symbol Lv) for that with number 116. […]
Both of the names proposed lie within the long tradition of the choice of names for elements. The proposal for 114 will honour the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions where the superheavy elements are synthesised. Georgiy N. Flerov (1913 – 1990) is recognised as a renowned physicist, author of the discovery of the spontaneous fission of uranium (1940, with Konstantin A. Petrzhak), pioneer in heavy-ion physics; and founder in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (1957).
The names of both elements were officially approved by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) the following year.
*The name Флёров is perhaps more accurately transliterated as Flyorov, but I’ve maintained the Flerov spelling here because it is the more usual transliteration and for consistency with the spelling of the element’s name.
Sources:
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). “Names Proposed for Elements of Atomic Number 114 and 116” (press release), 2 December 2011.
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2016, s.v. flerovium, n.
Image credit: MARKA Publishing & Trading Centre, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image