Aerial view of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
12 January 2023
Livermorium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 116 and the symbol Lv. It was first produced in the year 2000 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia in collaboration with scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Livermorium has no applications other than pure research.
The name, along with that of flerovium, was proposed by the JINR in December 2011:
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.
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The name proposed for element number 116 honours the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1952). A group of researchers of this Laboratory with the heavy element research group of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions took part in the work carried out in Dubna on the synthesis of superheavy elements including element 116.
The town of Livermore, California is named for rancher Robert Livermore (1799–1858), who once owned the land on which the town and the laboratory now sit. Livermore was an Englishman who jumped ship in Alta California in 1822, married the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and acquired the land with his partner José Noriega in 1839 through a land grant by the Mexican government.
Sources:
Drummond, Gary. “Short History of Robert Livermore.” Livermore Heritage Guild, n.d.
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. livermorium, n.
Photo credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, c. 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.