Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950
31 January 2025
Seaborgium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 106 and the symbol Sg. Its most stable isotopes have half lives of only a few minutes, and it has no applications other than pure research. The element is named after chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, who not only led the discovery of this element, but was instrumental in the discovery of several transuranic elements, most notably plutonium. Despite Seaborg’s contributions to nuclear chemistry, the naming was controversial. Not only was credit for the 1974 discovery of 106 embroiled in a dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union, but this was the first element to be named after a living person, and many thought that inappropriate.
But element 106 is not the first to be dubbed seaborgium. Several other transuranic elements (99, 100, and 105) have been unofficially named after Seaborg.
Seaborg’s name was floated as a potential element name as early as 1953. A September 1953 article in the journal Names noted that his name was being considered for the next element to be discovered:
Apparently more elements will be produced by the irradiative techniques of the cyclotron; elements no. 99 to no. 103 have already been predicted. The name seaborgium has already been suggested for the next discovered element, in recognition of Seaborg's achievements.
And a few months later, seaborgium was proposed as the name for element 99 (now known as einsteinium). From Newsweek of 15 February 1954:
Seaborg participated in the discovery of five previous man-made elements and is credited with a guiding role in the finding of No. 99. To the discoverers, who have the privilege of naming the new element, one name has already been suggested: seaborgium.
Element 106 was first created in 1971 by a team led by Albert Ghiorso at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but they did not recognize the significance at the time. In 1974, a Soviet team lead by Yuri Oganessian announced they had synthesized element 106 at their facility in Dubna, Russia. Following this announcement, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Seaborg and that included Ghiorso, repeated the 1971 experiment and found their data was in accord with the earlier data, showing that 106 had been synthesized in 1971.
The dispute over primacy of discovery raged on until 1992, when a joint working group of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) concluded that the evidence for the Soviet team’s discovery was insufficient, and credit should go to the Berkeley team. But the controversy over the element’s name did not end.
In 1994, the Berkeley team announced their preference for 106’s name was seaborgium. As reported by the San Francisco Examiner of 13 March 1994:
Element 106, which was created in a particle accelerator, has been named “seaborgium” after Dr. Glenn Seaborg, Nobel Prize winner and nuclear pioneer.
The announcement is to be made Sunday [13 March] by Seaborg’s associate Kenneth Hulet at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in San Diego, a society spokesperson said.
Objections to the name were immediately raised again, this time over naming the element for a living person. As a result, IUPAC initially rejected the name. But that decision came under fire for disregarding the right of discoverers to name their discoveries, and in 1998 IUPAC officially recognized seaborgium as the name for element 106.
Sources:
Davidson, Keay. “Element Named After Berkeley Scientist.” San Francisco Examiner, 13 March 1994, B-2/3–4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Ellis, Fred, Jr. “Naming of Chemical Elements.” Names, 1.3, September 1953, 163–76 at 172. American Name Society.
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.
“Names and Symbols of Transfermium Elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1997),” Chemistry International, 20.2, 1998, 37–38 at 38. IUPAC.org.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. seaborgium, n.
“Violent New Element.” Newsweek, 15 February 1954, 59/2. ProQuest Magazines.
Photo credit: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1950. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.