Discovery date : 1964
Discovered by: Georgy Flerov and colleagues and at Dubna, near Moscow, Russia,
and independently by Albert Ghiorso and colleagues at Berkeley, California, USA
Origin of the name: Rutherfordium is named in honour of New Zealand Chemist Ernest Rutherford,
one of the first to explain the structure of atoms.
Allotropes :
~>RUTHERFORDIUM is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Rf and atomic number 104, named after physicist Ernest Rutherford. As a synthetic element, it is not found in nature and can only be created in a laboratory.
| FACT BOX | |||
| Group | 4 | Melting point | Unknown |
| Period | 7 | Boiling point | Unknown |
| Block | d | Density (g cm−3) | Unknown |
| Atomic number | 104 | Relative atomic mass | [267] |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 265Rf |
| Electron configuration | [Rn] 5f146d27s2 | CAS number | 53850-36-5 |
| ChemSpider ID | 11201447 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
In 1964, a team led by Georgy Flerov at the Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, bombarded plutonium with neon and produced element 104, isotope 259. They confirmed their findings in 1966.
In 1969, a team led by Albert Ghiorso at the Californian Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) made three successful attempts to produce element 104: by bombarding curium with oxygen to get isotope-260, californium with carbon to get isotope-257, and californium with carbon to get isotope-258.
A dispute over priority of discovery followed and eventually, in 1992, the International Unions of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) concluded that both the Russian and American researchers had been justified in making their claims. IUPAC decided element 104 would be called rutherfordium.