EjieHa Aio.Mii.

'i^aT
KHoppe
nyTEIlIECTBHE
B MMP
TPAHCYPAHOB
A V isit to
T ransurania
Elaine Knorre

Translated by M. Brodskaya
Edited by H. C. Creighton

Mir Publishers
Moscow
Ha aHrjiHHCKOM h3liko
First published 1974
© English translation, Revised from the 1971
Mir Publishers, 1974 Russian edition
 CONTENTS

Chance Plus ...................................................... 7

First Steps beyond Uranium ....................... 15
Riddles of the Transuranic Elements . . . 39
Heavy Ions ...................................................... 62
A Machine for ‘Making Atoms’ ................ 68
When Ion Strikes Nucleus ........................... 82
Playing Nuclear Patience ............................... 89
A New Type of Radioactivity ....................... 94
On White Dwarfs and on Earth ............................112
Uncommon Properties of Common Nuclei . . 123
How Are New Elements C r e a te d ? ........................ 148
New Flash Chemistry ........................................... 192
How Many New Elements Can There Be? . 198
 CHANCE P L U S ...

There is an old Eastern fairy tale about three cle­

ver, lucky princes, darlings of fortune, who, in wan­
dering about the wide world, ‘were always making
discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things
they were not in quest of.’ The princes were from
Serendip (the old Arabic name for the island of Cey­
lon), and this story inspired Horace Walpole to coin
the term ‘serendipity’ for the faculty of making
happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.
Serendipity is a faculty of true scientists. It often
happens in science that you are in quest of one thing,
but thanks to chance, a lucky coincidence of circum­
stances and shrewdness, something quite different, but
much more important, is discovered. The history of
science, however, like the old tale of the three prin­
ces of Serendip shows that this gift is bestowed on
inspired and profound minds and that it is only the
flash of genius and good training that enables them
not to pass over a lucky accident with indifference
but to turn it into a discovery.
So chance is not merely chance, and serendipity
is not simply a lucky coincidence.
We will not give you examples of falling apples,
shouts of ‘Eureka’ when the water overflows the bath,
mysterious blue glows suddenly glimmering in a
laboratory shed and ushering in a whole new branch
of science. Suffice it to recall the exciting story of
the discovery and study of elements heavier than
uranium, the heaviest one that ‘completes’ Mende­
leev’s Table, the story of the first synthetic elements
made by man, which had either disappeared from
the face of the earth long ago or had never existed
at all.
7
Fermi’s team in Rome, 1934. Amaldi, Franco Rasetti, En-
Left to right: Oscar D ’Agos- rico Fermi
tino, Emilio Segre, Edoardo

It all properly begins with serendipity one sunny

morning in 1935. In the low, cool vaults of the Univer­
sity of Rome young Enrico Fermi, already a world1-
famous physicist, and a quartet of liis- b e st1friends
and colleagues, Edoardo Amaldi, Oscar D ’Agostift©',
Franco Rasetti, and Emilio Segre were looking, woh-
'8
derstruck, at the ‘work in hand’—an unpretentious
experimental chamber in which they hoped to produce
new elements heavier than uranium by bombarding
the latter with neutrons.
For a neutron gun they used a small sealed glass
tube containing beryllium powder arid a radioactive
gas (radon) that, like radium, emitted alpha particles
(nuclei of helium), which were needed to obtain free
neutrons. Alpha particles (approximately one per
hundred thousand) hit the nucleus of a beryllium atom,
uniting with it to form a carbon nucleus and liberate
a neutron. Fermi and his colleagues needed free neu­
trons as projectiles to force their way into Nature’s
main citadel, the atomic nucleus.
By that time Fermi and other physicists were
already well aware that the atom, Nature’s principal
building material, consists 99.999999999 per cent of
free space. In a neutral atom light, negatively char­
ged particles, or electrons, circle in outer orbits
about a positively charged nucleus, the volume of
which is around 10"32 that of the atom, or less. Al­
most the whole mass of the atom is concentrated in
the submicroscopic nucleus, and its density is tre­
mendous (240 x 1012 grams per cubic centimetre). The
weight of a cubic millimetre of substance of compa­
rable density would be approximately 100 000 tons.
If our houses were built exclusively of atomic nuclei,
fifteen standard ten-storey blocks would weigh as
much as the whole planet.
The atomic nucleus is known to consist of heavy,
positively charged particles, or protons, and of neu­
trons, which are identical with them in mass hut have
no charge ^and which had been discovered by .lames
Chadwick two years before Fermi’s experiments).
The number of protons in a nucleus determines its
charge, and consequently the number and arrange-9
9
ment of the orbital electrons balancing its positive
charge. Thus an atom as a whole is neutral.
The number of its electrons and their arrangement
in orbits determine all the chemical properties of an
atom, all the countless combinations of elements,
and all the chemical reactions that underlie the in­
finite variety of the world of living and non-living
matter. Electrons also determine the positions of the
elements in Mendeleev’s Periodic System. The Pe­
riodic System is no longer an empirical law of chemi­
stry. Having become firmly grounded in the theory
of atomic structure, it has acquired a simple but very
essential physical sense and become a basic law of
atomic physics. Proceeding from the data now known
to science, one can say without exaggeration that it
is the only universal law of the structure of matter
discovered by man, and the only one sufficiently
simple to be universal.
D. I. Mendeleev, the creator of the Periodic Law,
used to joke that one must observe certain rules even
when picking mushrooms. The principles underlying
the structure of matter discovered by him opened up
dozens of ways for people to look for and deliberately
produce new building materials of the Universe, and
opened the door to Nature’s magic kitchen.
The chemical properties of the atom, then, depend
on the structure of the outer electron shell, which
in turn is almost wholly determined by the nuclear
charge. So it follows that the position of an element
in the Table is directly dependent on the number of
protons contained in the nucleus of its atoms.
By 1935 both physicists and chemists had gained
quite a clear picture of the role of neutrons, the other
main components of the nucleus, which act as a ‘ce­
ment’ binding it into a single whole. Free neutrons
are electrically neutral, which allows them to pass10
10
through the strong barrier of positive electricity sur­
rounding the nucleus. Once in the nucleus, however,
they can, in certain conditions, expel an electron
and a neutrino and become protons. A neutron can
also ‘knock’ a positive charge out of one of the nuc­
lear protons and convert it into a neutron, itself
becoming a proton. Because of this interconvertibi­
lity neutrons and protons share the name ‘nucleons’.
The total number of protons and neutrons in the
nucleus of an atom determines its mass number A.
It had already been known since 1910-2, thanks
to the work of the English physicists Frederick Soddy
and J .J. Thomson, that the atoms of many elements
had ‘relations’.
These cousin-atoms or, as Soddy christened them,
‘isotopes’ (occupying the same place) have the same
number of protons in their nuclei, and consequently,
of electrons, but a different number of neutrons. In
other words, isotopes have a similar electron shell
but a dissimilar nuclear filling. So, though having
identical chemical properties, they differ in physical
properties (different mass and different stability).
For example, in addition to hydrogen with a mass
number 1, there also exists in nature, as a slight ad­
mixture of ordinary hydrogen, a hydrogen of mass
number 2 (deuterium), the nucleus of which (a deu-
teron) contains one proton and one neutron. The
constituent of all living matter, carbon, has radio­
active isotopes that disintegrate after a certain pe­
riod, emitting radiation, and also stable isotopes,
viz. carbon-12 (Z = 6, A = 12) and carbon-13 (Z=6
and A =13).
But Nature skilfully guards her main secret, the
charged atomic nucleus. It is practically inaccessible
and it seemed impossible to penetrate it. The intra­
nuclear forces retaining nucleons in it are immense
11
and still incomprehensible. They successfully with­
stand electric forces. Coulomb’s law, which is now
about two centuries old, says that the force of repul­
sion between two bodies of like charge is proportional
to the magnitude of the charges and inversely propor­
tional to the square of the distance between them.
This implies that the smaller the distance between
the charged bodies, the more strongly they repel one
another. The distance between positively charged
protons is as little as 10~13 centimetre. Soddy cal­
culated that two grams of protons placed at opposite
poles of the earth would repel one another with a
force of 26 tons. If the force of repulsion were not
countered by the immeasurably greater force of nuc­
lear attraction, all the atoms of the Universe, except
hydrogen, would disperse, forming a gigantic hydro­
gen cloud.
The force of nuclear attraction can operate only
at very close distances commensurate with the dia­
meter of the atomic nucleus.
Fermi and his colleagues, knowing that it was the
atomic nucleus that held the answer to N ature’s most
important mysteries, sought in every way just to
open the door to it the slightest bit. To do so they
employed a remarkable property of slowed-down neu­
trons, their ability to penetrate the barrier of atomic
forces unhindered. Atoms are as transparent to neu­
trons as a glass ball to light rays. They virtually do
not interact with electrons and can move inside a
substance, colliding only with nuclei, without losing
any energy. A neutron, however, can interact with
nuclei no matter how great the speed at which it is
moving. Having collided with a nucleus, it either
changes direction or penetrates the nucleus, causing
a nuclear transformation.
Free neutrons, however, do not travel where they
12
are aimed though they very occasionally do so. To
ensure that they did Fermi devised his own apparatus.
When surplus neutron enters an atomic nucleus, it
causes it to undergo a transformation. If the neutron
(upon emitting an electron) turns into a proton, the
nucleus, having become one unit heavier, will be con­
verted into its right-hand neighbour in the Periodic
Table, that is a new element will be produced.
Fermi’s group subjected every element, then known,
beginning with hydrogen, to bombardment by their
neutron gun. After a long chain of disappointments,
when they achieved nothing, or next to nothing, the
sunny spring day came at last on which the atomic
hurricane broke. The gun bombarded the heaviest
element then known in the Mendeleev Table, urani­
um, with neutrons.
Fermi and his co-workers had supposed that when
the uranium nucleus, packed to the lim it with 146
neutrons, gained one more neutron, one of them would
be converted into a proton. Thus element 93, with a
nucleus containing 93 protons and 146 neutrons (which
did not exist in nature) would be created artificially.
And in actual fact, in Fermi’s experiments, the
uranium bombarded with neutrons from the little
glass gun was transmuted into radioactive elements
never before observed. But what were they? Though
the New York Times published an article about an
Italian producing element 93 by bombarding urani­
um, Fermi himself, and the world’s most eminent
scientists, racked their brains over this mystery for
another five years.
On 10 December 1938 Fermi was awarded the No­
bel Prize for physics ‘for the discovery of new radio­
active elements produced by neutron bombardment,
and for the related discovery of nuclear reactions
induced by slow neutrons’. On 11 February 193913
13
Nature published a sensational letter from Lise Mei­
tner and Otto Frisch, under the heading ‘Disintegra­
tion of Uranium hy Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear-
Reaction’.
The unusual radioactive elements obtained by the
Rome group were not transuranic elements at all,
as was established by the scrupulous experiments of
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and confirmed by
Frisch’s experiments, but in fact only radioactive
isotopes of the well-known light elements barium,
lanthanum, and cerium, with a mass half that of ura­
nium. It was an event that radically altered the his­
tory of mankind.
Fermi’s group, without knowing it, had managed
to do something no one had ever dreamed of: they
had split a monolith of incredible density, the atomic
nucleus, by means of nothing more than a tiny neu­
tron! As someone aptly put it, it was equivalent to
shattering a granite rock by tapping it with a pencil.
And the ‘rock’ did not simply break apart but in do­
ing so released the immense energy locked up in it.
For the first time there dawned before humanity
the breath-taking prospect of releasing and then u ti­
lizing the most powerful energy in nature. The for­
mula of this century, Einstein’s famous equation
E =mc2, was being turned into the practical means
to revolutionize technology. For one gram of uranium
can liberate an amount of energy equivalent to that
obtained by burning 2000 kilograms of oil or 2500
kilograms of the best coal. And as an explosive, one
kilogram of nuclear substance is equivalent to 20
million kilograms of TNT.
The Nobel Prize, Fermi used to joke later, had
been awarded for the first time for an experiment
that had been wrongly interpreted. The experiment
itself put such enormous power into man’s hands
14
that all the leading laboratories throughout the world
naturally concentrated on studying the artificial fis­
sion of atomic nuclei induced by neutrons and investi­
gating the processes that accompanied it.
Artificial fission became Problem No. 1. There is
no need to repeat here what everyone now knows,
since it is common knowledge that the peaceful atom
was born in the Soviet Union, where (in 1954 in the
town of Obninsk) current from the world’s first ato­
mic power station was first fed into the mains. Ato­
mic engineering has become an independent industry
while nuclear physics, the science of the atomic nuc­
leus, has continued to develop. No one would be bold
enough to predict how many wonders and surprises
it still has in store for us. After all, serendipity is
a promising faculty of any true science.

FIRST STEPS BEYOND URANIUM

The mysterious element 93 turned up when least

expected.
Excited by the news of the great discovery of nu­
clear fission, scientists in various countries busied
themselves devising basic experiments that would
enable them to obtain additional information about
this remarkable phenomenon. In 1940 Edwin McMil­
lan at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley (Cali­
fornia) was trying to measure the distance the fission
fragments of uranium could travel in matter. He
took some leaves of ordinary cigarette paper and
stacked them together to form a little book. On the
top leaf he put a very thin layer of uranium dioxide,
leaving the others to act as a screen to stop the fis­
sion fragments. The whole book, with its uranium
cover, was put into the target of a cyclotron and
15
Edwin McMillan, who dis­
covered the first transuranic
element

subjected to neutron bombardment. Separating the

papers after irradiation, McMillan measured the ra­
dioactivity of each leaf by means of a Geiger counter.
And then, all of a sudden.
He got the results he was looking for. But, as he
relates, it also turned out that the by-product or side-
effect was much more important than the initial ex­
periment.
In this case the by-product was that the sheet of ciga­
rette paper coated with uranium contained a radio­
activity with a different half-life and different pro­
perties from those of the fission products in the other
sheets.
And McMillan had an idea they might belong to
another element.
At this point, Dr.P.H.Abelson, an old friend of
McMillan’s, came to Berkeley from Washington on
16
his summer holidays. Instead of lazing about he
spent his days with McMillan at the laboratory bench
trying to identify the chemical properties of the un­
known substance found in the first leaf of paper. To
the surprise and joy of the two enthusiasts it appea­
red to differ in chemical properties from any known
olement and called for the introduction of changes
in the Periodic Table.
Thus, at last, the first element heavier than ura­
nium had been discovered. They named it neptunium.
It filled place 93 in Mendeleev’s Table since it con­
tained one proton more than uranium.
In 1951 Dr. McMillan was awarded the Nobel
Prize jointly with Dr. Glenn Seaborg (who had con­
tinued his work) for the discovery and study of che­
mical elements with atomic numbers greater than
uranium and coming after it in the Periodic System
(and for that reason called transuranic elements).
What was it about the first transuranic element
that so astonished scientists?
At the beginning of the 40’s the elements in the
Periodic Table were not only listed in order of their
atomic numbers but also arranged in groups that
embraced elements with similar properties. Neptu­
nium should have occupied the 93rd space directly
beneath rhenium, and alongside uranium, which at
that time lay below and in the same column as tung­
sten. It had been supposed that neptunium would
have properties similar to those of rhenium. But
McMillan and Abelson found, to their great surprise,
that it was not in the least like rhenium and resemb­
led uranium much more than would have been expec­
ted, differing very little in its properties from the
latter.
Anticipating events, let us note here that this fact
and others we will be discussing later made it neces-
2-663 17
sary to review the arrangement of all the heaviest
elements in the Periodic System and helped to bring
out new patterns in it.
It was of interest, of course, to obtain even heavier
elements. It was a question of No. 94, of whose exis­
tence there could be no doubt. The nucleus of neptu­
nium was radioactive, that is could decay by emitting
electrons (which always involves the conversion of
a neutron in the nucleus into a proton and increases
the positive charge of the nucleus).
Thus nuclear physics developed another important
trend, the production (synthesis) and study of super­
heavy atomic nuclei. This trend was led at the time
by the American radiochemist, Seaborg, then head
of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, and by
Fermi’s colleague and pupil Emilio Segre. In the
late 50’s the centre of this most interesting research
moved to Dubna, a town near Moscow where, under
the leadership of G. N. Flyorov, member of the USSR
Academy of Sciences, it was taken up by the inter­
national team of scientists of the Laboratory of Nuc­
lear Reactions of the Joint Institute for Nuclear
Research.
The science of transuranic elements has, in turn,
greatly stimulated the development of nuclear phy­
sics, prompting new directions for research, to say
nothing of the wealth of new methods, instruments,
and techniques that has been brought into being in
the heat of this absorbing quest.
What does it mean, to produce new elements that
disappeared from the face of the earth long, long ago?
It means vying successfully with Mother Nature
herself.
Man tries to create new nuclei according to a pre­
viously considered plan and his own recipes. For
centuries the old alchemists spared no efforts stri-
18
ving, by means of ingenious manipulations, to find
the magic ‘philosopher’s stone’ in order to trans­
mute base metals into gold.
The ‘philosopher’s stone’ proved to be the atomic
nucleus. But can present-day scientists transmute
any material into gold?
Now that they know the structure of the nucleus
it is possible, in principle: a proton here, an electron
or a neutron there, and Bob’s your Uncle. As soon
as any substance has 79 protons packed into the
nuclei of its atoms, it will jump over to position
79 in the Periodic Table and acquire the noble sym­
bol Au. ‘But i t ’s too dull and pointless’, scientists
would say. ‘We know all about gold and it has no
special secrets for physicists or chemists. But francium,
now th a t’s something else. It has so many puzzles
and can be so useful... W e’d do better to use gold
to produce francium. That would do science good.’
And in fact that is happening. Gold targets are the
normal thing in modern cyclotrons. But that is not
the point. It is much more tempting to use artificially
obtained heavy elements, though that calls for large
quantities, and so far only a few atoms of them have
been ‘won’ and that by titanic efforts. Their cost is
incomparably higher than that of gold.
To produce a substance according to one’s own
recipes one must be able literally to foresee everything,
and to calculate and compare everything. It takes
the main guiding thread of Mendeleev’s Periodic Law
to find and sort out the scores of still unfamiliar,
tangled threads hidden away in heaven knows what
hiding-places. In general, one has to answer millions
of whats, whys, and wherefors.
The most difficult thing of all is to single out the
main question among those millions. But no matter
how one reckons them, they are all important and
2* 19
necessary and all main ones. It is important to sort
out in detail the mechanism of nuclear interactions.
What happens exactly when a projectile nucleus hits
a target nucleus? There is a vast number of possible
reactions, depending on the energy or velocity of
the bombarding nucleus, on its radioactive features,
and on the character and potentialities of the target
nucleus.
Nuclei can collide like two billiard balls and fly
apart without suffering any change, or one may fly
off while the other one stays where it was, or they
can ‘collide’ through their electrical fields rather
than directly. Either or both nuclei may gain addi­
tional energy through the interaction, i.e. become
excited. And once again, they may behave in very
different ways. In striving to get rid of this energy
and return to a stable state, a nucleus may radiate
it in the form of a gamma-quantum, an electron, a
positron, or one or more neutrons; or it may ‘cool
down’ by itself, or it may break up into pieces for
no apparent reason from a negligible action, a pheno­
menon that is known as ‘tunnel effect’. Tunnel effect
cannot be exactly explained as there is nothing simi­
lar to it in classical physics. Why a nucleus, having
penetrated all the barriers of nuclear and electro­
magnetic forces, should suddenly disintegrate, or eject
several nucleons, or absorb nucleons of another nuc­
leus is incomprehensible to anyone not up in the laws
of quantum mechanics that govern the microworld.
It is as mysterious as if a ball kicked by a child were,
for no apparent reason, to pass through a concrete
wall metres thick. In principle that might happen,
of course, but the probability of such an event is re­
ally too close to zero. With atomic nuclei, however,
it happens quite frequently. Tunnel effect is a very
ordinary thing in this unusual microworld.
20
 After colliding, nuclei may exchange nucleons or
may fuse to form a complex compound nucleus. And
this compound nucleus gets rid of its surplus energy
by various means.
It is not only the uninitiated who find it difficult
to comprehend and interpret the vagaries of nuclear
interactions but also the ‘high priests’ of the physics
of the microworld, i.e. the theorists. For one has to
have a good idea of the structure of the nucleus and
be able to describe it accurately: how the protons
and neutrons are arranged within it, how they com­
bine, whether their distribution is uniform, how they
are bound together, what is the character and strength
of the interaction of free and bound nucleons, and
so on. It is far from simple, for nuclei are most comp­
licated formations. The forces operating between
nucleons, as we already know, are also very compli­
cated and still have not been sufficiently studied.
And even if they had been, it is exceedingly difficult
to describe the properties of a system consisting of
a large, though finite, number of particles.
In order to understand the laws governing the pro­
perties of nuclei, physicists began to design simple
models. What does it mean ‘to design a model’?
The term is interpreted rather loosely but in fact it
means any set of simplifications. One has to find a
model that will describe the real system with the
greatest possible accuracy and permit of mathema­
tical interpretation. Every model, naturally, singles
out one aspect and explains the experimental facts
for which this aspect is of paramount importance.
In 1939, when passions ran high over the pro­
blem of nuclear fission, the famous Danish theorist
Niels Bohr, author of the theory of the atom, and
John Wheeler, of Princeton University, advanced a
hydrodynamic or liquid drop model, treating the
21
nucleus as a drop of liquid. Independent of them,
in 1936-9, a Soviet theoretical physicist, Jacob Fren­
kel, developed a fuller and more detailed electric
drop theory that likened an excited nucleus to a char­
ged drop of boiling water.
The formation of a sphere demands the least expen­
diture of energy, and a drop of water is a sphere.
Just as molecules of water form drops of various
sizes, so protons and neutrons give rise to various
atomic nuclei. By adding energy to a drop of liquid
it can be elongated and it will remain so as long as
the forces of surface tension are able to keep it whole.
At a certain point, however, it will become more eco­
nomic for it to split in two, the excess energy being
converted into heat. The forces operating in the ato­
mic nuclei are quite different, of course, from those
in a drop of water. Yet, for all that the complex com­
pensation of nuclear and electrostatic forces can also
be disturbed at a certain threshold energy, causing
deformation of the nucleus. It will then also be more
economic as regards energy for the nucleus to split
or to resort to some form of radioactive decay—ra­
diation of particles, or gamma-quanta.
The liquid drop model explains the resistance
of nuclei to deformation quite well and predicts the
limits of their stability during fission. Why, for
example, do heavy nuclei divide much more frequently
than light ones? The more protons there are in a de­
formed nucleus, the greater is the repulsive force bet­
ween its parts and the less the additional energy
needed for it to explode and break up. As one goes
down Mendeleev’s Table, from the smaller numbers
to the larger ones, the energy needed to cause fission
becomes less and less.
Heavy nuclei only need a fairly small amount of
energy to overcome the nuclear forces of attraction
22
and in some cases it may happen spontaneously, without
additional energy.
The liquid drop theory provided a model for the
composite or compound nucleus that implied not
only that all the nucleons were uniformly distribu­
ted throughout it but also that they were equally
responsible for the properties of each of its specific
states. When an ‘alien’ projectile particle hits a tar­
get nucleus, striking one or two nucleons, it loses
energy to them, and, consequently, to the nucleus
as a whole, before it passes on through. The energy
remaining in the ‘projectile’ will not be sufficient to
overcome the nuclear forces of attraction, so that it
will be captured by the nucleus. The compound nuc­
leus, having obtained excess energy from the incoming
particle may concentrate it in one of its own partic­
les, which will then escape.
A compound nucleus has a comparatively long life
and so has time to ‘forget’ how it was ‘born’. Its
disintegration therefore does not in the least depend
upon the way it was formed.
The compound nucleus theory was very successful
in interpreting many experimental phenomena; the
liquid drop model, thanks to its simplicity, was con­
sidered very convenient for describing the real nuc­
leus, and played an enormous role in the study of
nuclear structure. It is still used when considering
fission processes in complex nuclei.
But it soon proved that the analogy with a droplet
was unsatisfactory in many important cases, for
example, for describing states of excitation. An exci­
ted nucleus is far from homogeneous and its consti­
tuents are not equally responsible for its state. All
its parts are in continuous motion and undergo chan­
ges incomparably more complicated than the motion
of particles in a drop of liquid.
23
 The model of the nucleus as a single ensemble of
very strongly bound particles, in which the length
of the free path of a nucleon in nuclear matter (the
mean path covered by it before the first collision)
is very short compared with the size of the nucleus,
proved erroneous in many respects. Much more in
agreement with observations were the models, or
methods, of D .R .H artree and V. A. Fock, which
looked on the nucleus as an ‘association’ of indepen­
dent particles and supposed that the nucleons could
move about almost freely in the nuclear field. Roug­
hly speaking, such a nucleus would resemble a toy
balloon in which the molecules of gas virtually did
not interact. Basing themselves on the gas bubble
method Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J .H .D . Jensen and
others devised a nuclear shell model that unexpected­
ly led to striking advances. It assumes that neutrons
and protons are grouped in shells, similar to the
electron shells or orbits of an atom. The structure of
these shells is extremely complex, and the forces and
charges within the nucleus are not uniformly distri­
buted. The authors of the model believed the nucleus
could be well described if each of its nucleons was
assumed to move independently in the averaged
field generated by all the other nucleons. The length
of the nucleon’s free path would then be comparable
with the diameter of the nucleus, that is to say any
nucleon could pass through it unimpeded.
According to the shell model, the distribution of
nucleons is governed by the Pauli exclusion principle.
The shells are composed of energy levels and in any
one level of the averaged field, there cannot be more
than two protons or two neutrons. This very impor­
tant feature of a level to some extent determines the
special stability of certain nuclei with a ‘magic number’
of protons or neutrons, i.e. 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126.
24
 The first magic number to be discovered was 82,
the number of protons in the nuclei of an element
familiar to everyone, lead, which is the end product
of all natural radioactive transformations.
The shell model is successful in explaining not only
the unusual stability of nuclei containing a magic
number of nucleons but also many experimental
facts relating to the properties of nuclei in both the
ground and the excited states, and the peculiarities
of their radioactive decay.
But, as with the liquid drop theory, phenomena
were soon noted in experiments that it was impossible
to tie up with the shell model. This time it was nuc­
lei differing greatly from the magic number in number
of protons and neutrons that spoiled the game.
It was only when Aage Bohr, son of Niels Bohr,
and B. R. Mottelson proposed the collective model,
which was further developed by the Soviet theoreti­
cal physicist A. S. Davydov and his collabora­
tors, that the behaviour of these nuclei could be des­
cribed.
The collective or generalized model supposes that
nuclei remote from those with magic numbers have a
different shape, spheroidal not spherical. In general
a sphere and a spheroid are figures of the same order,
as a sphere can be treated as a spheroid with equal
axes.
On the example of the shell model, there are consi­
dered to be degrees of freedom in the collective mo­
del due to the motion of one or more nucleons, but
at the same time, as in the liquid drop model, atten­
tion is drawn to the collective motion of all the partic­
les in consequence of the change in shape and orien­
tation of the nucleus.
The collective model, which is physically much
closer to the shell model, explains many experimental
25
Direct interactions: a deuteron strikes a nucleus, its neutron
is captured by the nucleus, while the proton continues
its flight

findings concerning spheroid nuclei and enables some

of their properties to be predicted.
If we base ourselves on the relative independence
of nuclear particles, an optical model serves very
well to describe interaction of particles with the
nucleus. The analogy of this model with classical
optics is based on the fact that nuclear particles
penetrate the nucleus much as light rays pass through
optical lenses; and it employs purely optical terms
like ‘optical density of the nucleus’, etc.
When a projectile particle, immediately after en­
tering a nucleus, collides with a resident particle,
and the latter escapes owing to the energy it has
received, we have a direct reaction. But if a particle,
having gained energy, goes on to collide with others
like a billiard ball, transferring its acquired energy
26
to them, the chances of any one particle gaining
enough energy to escape are much reduced and a com­
pound nucleus is formed. This explanation of the
way a compound nucleus is formed is less difficult
and complicated in the independent particle model
than in a model of strong and uniform interactions
based on the analogy with a drop of liquid.
Recent research indicates that the most accurate
description of nuclear structure is provided by an
independent particle model taking residual interac­
tions into account. By residual interactions we mean
the behaviour of nucleons conditioned by the beha­
viour of each and every particle in the nucleus, i.e.
internucleonic reactions that give rise to various
collective events within the nucleus.
The development of such a model has been greatly fa­
cilitated by the mathematical methods developed
by J. Bardeen, L. N. Cooper, and J. R. Schrieffer,
and independently by the Soviet mathematician
N. N. Bogolyubov, for the theory of superconducti­
vity, and which have enabled a superfluid model
to be constructed. Research carried out on this model
in Copenhagen, Dubna, Moscow, Paris, and Berkeley
provided an explanation of nuclear properties that
had not been given by any previous model. In fact it
describes any experimental observations linked with
the ground state of nuclei or a state of weak exci­
tation.
It is most important, it seems, that the models
constructed are not mutually exclusive but, on the
contrary, are complementary in a way and help to
disclose many details of nuclear structure; but with
each one only individual details and some of the for­
ces and processes operating between nucleons within
the nucleus are revealed. Each model is concerned
solely with the forces it takes as the main ones, for-
27
ces less important for the given processes being either
neglected or very roughly taken into account.
And although physicists have now learned to de­
termine which processes are of greatest significance
in various conditions, and have come to understand
the relationship between them and see the lim ita­
tions on the applicability of models, a rigorous and
consistent theory of the nucleus still does not exist.
Only the spectra of about 5 per cent of all existing
nuclei have been studied experimentally and the data
on them are far from complete.
It is of first-rate importance, naturally, to find a
way of bringing the various models together and to
begin creating a unified theory of the nucleus, the
more so that this is associated with another major
problem of great importance, that of nuclear radio­
activity.
As a matter of fact, what is radioactivity? That
would seem to be a simple question (one can find a
chapter on radioactivity in any school physics book
and few fields of knowledge can boast such an abun­
dant literature), but science is still unable to give
an exact and exhaustive answer despite the fact that
many interesting things have been learned since radio­
activity was discovered and that knowledge of this
phenomenon has come a long way.
Scarcely was radioactivity known than that physi­
cist of genius, Albert Einstein, prophetically said
that it was the most revolutionary force of technolo­
gical progress since prehistoric man discovered fire.
Figuratively speaking, radioactivity is the means
by which an atomic nucleus transmutes itself into
the nucleus of another element. Science already knows
several ways this can happen: alpha radioactivity,
or the simultaneous emission of two protons and two
neutrons (i.e. a helium nucleus with a charge of 2);
28
Certain forms of beta radioactivity (i.e. the emission
or capture of electrons or positrons) known occasio­
nally to accompany the transition of a neutron into
a proton or vice versa; proton radioactivity, when
the nucleus emits a proton (two-proton radioactivity
involving the emission of two protons has been pre­
dicted in theory); gamma-decay; and spontaneous
fission. We will consider the secrets of these transfor­
mations later in greater detail, and so will lim it our­
selves here to their enumeration.
The discovery and study of radioactivity helped
us to understand how the atom is built, and to pene­
trate its nucleus and, of course, enabled us rapidly
to extend the boundaries of Mendeleev’s Periodic
Table. Without knowledge of radioactivity it would
have been impossible to discover isotopes, and in
general there would have been no science of the atom.
Credit for this discovery, one of the greatest in
man’s history, belongs to the French physicist Henri
Becquerel. As usual it did not happen without seren­
dipity. On the advice of his colleague, the well-known
mathematician H. Poincare, Becquerel performed se­
veral experiments to elucidate the peculiarities of
phosphorescence (the cold luminescence of certain
bodies), wanting to find out whether it was accom­
panied with X-rays.
On 24 February 1896 Becquerel wrapped a photo­
graphic plate in black paper and put it in sunlight
with a uranium salt on top of it. When, after a time,
the plate was unwrapped and developed, he found
it to be fogged and noticed that the image of the
salt was clearly imprinted. He decided to repeat
the experiment the next day, but was unable to ex­
pose the plates to sunlight, as it remained cloudy
the whole day. So he put the plates away in a drawer
of his desk, still neatly wrapped in paper with ura-
29
nium salt. For a whole week the sun did not shine
in Paris and Becquerel could not continue his expe­
riments. On March 1st he decided to develop the
unexposed plates in order to check the purity of the
plates themselves and consequently of the experi­
ment. The dark contours of the samples could be
easily distinguished on them. The uranium compo­
und was emitting rays itself without the aid of sun­
light! That was how natural radioactivity was dis­
covered, i.e. the capacity of elements to decay spon­
taneously emitting radiation.
Within a few years scientists could already diffe­
rentiate three modes of radioactive transformation
of elements. Then the existence of radioactive isoto­
pes was established. But to get to the heart of this
phenomenon and really to use this guide to N ature’s
treasure-house could only be done by accumulating
and expanding knowledge of the atomic nucleus. In
fact, we can easily trace how each new step deeper
into this field brought with it appreciable progress
in mastering the secrets of N ature’s ‘magic’ kitchen.
By 1869, when the Periodic Law was discovered,
only 63 elements were known, and then only the stable
ones, i.e. their stable isotopes.
Between 1875 and 1886 three more elements were
discovered, as correctly predicted by Mendeleev from
his Law. In the last decade of the nineteenth century
some of the rare-earth elements and the five inert
gases were discovered and identified.
As soon as the results of Becquerel’s experiments
on natural radioactivity had been published, dis­
coveries of hitherto unknown radioactive elements
followed one after another, and some elements that
had been well known for a long time were found to
have such unexpected radioactive properties that
they were treated, like uranium, as if newly discove-
30
red and underwent a second birth. Such was the case
with thorium, uranium’s neighbour in the Table.
When, in 1828, the chemist and naturalist, Jons
Jacob Berzelius, christened the new element he had
separated from a mineral thorium after Thor, the
Scandinavian god of thunder and lightning, he was
not of course suggesting that it possessed magic pro­
perties and by no means associating it with the thun­
der of explosions. Thorium owes its second birth to
the great French scientists, the Curies, who detected
its radioactivity in 1898-9.
While studying the radioactive properties of ura­
nium and uranium salts and minerals, Marie Curie
isolated two quite new radioactive elements from
uranium ore that were hundreds of times as radioac­
tive as uranium itself. In July 1898, in the French
journal Comptes rendus there appeared a communica­
tion about the discovery of the first of these elements,
an analogue of tellurium, precipitated from a solu­
tion in hydrochloric acid by means of bismuth sulp­
hide. Marie Curie called the new element polonium
after her native land, Poland. Six months later, in
the same journal she published the first information
on another radioactive element, radium, whose pro­
perties fully corresponded with Mendeleev’s predic­
tion and proved to be close to its chemical analogue,
barium.
In 1899 Andre Debierne, an associate of the Curies,
discovered yet another element, actinium. The most
remarkable thing about it was not only that he had
not isolated it but that he had not observed it either.
Debierne had deduced its existence from the products
of its radioactive decay, which were also radioactive.
A year later, and independently of Debierne, actinium
was discovered by the German chemist F. 0. Giesel,
who demonstrated its similarity to lanthanum.
31
 It was extremely difficult to study actinium at
that time. Its infrequent occurrence and the poor
sensitivity of the equipment then available, made
Soddy, the ‘father’ of isotopes and greatest student
of radioactivity, write ten years after its discovery:
atomic number unknown; average lifetime unknown;
radiation none; mother substance unknown; the star­
ting material seems to be uranium; disintegration
product radioactinium.
Only later was it shown that the actinium isotope
discovered decayed emitting beta particles of very
low energy.
In 1899 and 1900 the constituents of radioactive
radiation were determined: namely, alpha, beta, and
gamma rays.
In 1900, too, Ernest Rutherford, who first discove­
red the atomic nucleus, detected with Soddy the break­
down product of a radioactive element in radium pre­
parations, the result of the transmutation of one ele­
ment into another, which they called emanation.
At first they believed the emanation to be three new
inert gases, but it subsequently became clear that
they were chemically inseparable varieties of one
and the same gas, radon.
In 1901 europium was discovered and in 1903 gal­
lium was detected as a product of the radioactive
decay of radium. In 1907 lutecium was discovered.
And in addition to these, there was a host of unnamed
elements.
Soon 30 radioactive substances regarded as chemi­
cal elements were competing for the eight vacant
places in Mendeleev’s Table. The avalanche threa­
tened to engulf the periodic law. Luckily, Soddy
(Nobel Prize for chemistry) suggested, in 1910, the
existence of twin-nuclei, different versions of the sa­
me olement, and called them isotopes. As we already
32
 TABLE 1

3—663
Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of the Elements Constructed on the Basis of Bohr’s Atomic Model
(at the time when scientists were still making their first attempts to obtain transuranic elements)

33
Yb Lu
know, they had absolutely the same nuclear charge
and chemical properties, but different atomic weights
and physical properties. Following this discovery
experiments to determine nuclear charges brought
the number of known elements to 86.
By the beginning of the Thirties there were only
four unfilled places left in the Periodic Table (with
atomic numbers 43, 61, 85, and 87), and the whole
series closed with uranium (92). m i.
But was this the last one? Did the Periodic Table
have to close there? Could there not be elements
heavier than uranium? What would their properties
be? To predict them at that time was very difficult
as next to nothing was known about them. Mendeleev
believed there could be at least five elements heavier
than uranium, but he did not express any views about
their possible chemical properties. On the basis of
the model of atomic structure proposed by JNiels
Bohr the arrangement of elements in the Periodic
Table was altered a little (see Table 1), so that there
were now only six elements in the row beginning
with number 87, namely: 88 radium, 89 actinium,
90 thorium, 91 protactinium, 92 uranium. It was
only natural to suppose that the blanks would be
filled. But how? Would the new family be analogous
to the lanthanide series? W hat element would it
begin with? ..............
Various researchers advanced different propositions.
Kanematsu Sugiura and Harold Urey, for instance,
believed that the progenitor should begin with ato­
mic number 95, whereas Maria Goeppert-Mayer pro­
posed protactinium or uranium. In the fifteen years
from 1926 to 1941, incidentally, all the elements
from 89 to 95 inclusive, without exception, were
suggested as the beginning of the new fam ily. During
those same fifteen years chemists in various countries

34
were trying to find natural transuranic elements.
R.A. Loring and Druse, using X-rays, deduced mys­
terious lines in pyrolusite and attributed them to
element 93. In 1934 Cobblin reported discovery of
‘bohemium’, with an atomic weight (mass) of 240;
and in 1938 Horia Hulubei and Koshua ‘secovanium’.
All of these communications remained unconfirmed.
Preconceived opinions of the hypothetical chemical
properties of the new elements were not the least
cause of error.
Most chemists expected the element with atomic
number 93 to be chemically analogous to rhenium.
The true nature of isotopy was not yet sufficiently
clear, though after the discovery of a nuclear particle,
the neutron, by the English physicist, Sir James
Chadwick, a former student of Rutherford’s, concep­
tions of the atomic nucleus made an immense quali­
tative leap.
We can say without exaggeration that the neutron
proved the magic key that helped us to penetrate
into that mysterious and unassailable citadel, the
atomic nucleus. For in the long run, it was the neu­
tron that gave man his first opportunity to reshape
matter at will and create new atoms. And as it tur­
ned out, it was necessary to create them.
The elements missing from the Periodic System
could not be found, not because they were badly
sought after but because they did not in fact occur
in nature. Having been formed some five thousand
million years ago along with all the elements of the
solar system, they did not survive to our day as they
had been transmuted into other nuclei as a result
of radioactive decay. In order to study their proper­
ties it was necessary to recreate them.
Not two years elapsed after discovery of the neutron
before another very great discovery was made that
3* 35
has had no little influence on the history of mankind.
In 1934 the French scientists, Irene Joliot-Curie, the
daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, and her husband
Frederic Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioacti­
vity and found a way of changing well-known stable
elements into radioactive ones, giving them a radio­
activity no less than that of natural radium.
By bombarding aluminium, magnesium, and boron
with alpha particles emitted by natural radioactive
elements the Joliot-Curies obtained radioactive iso­
topes of the common stable elements phosphorus,
silicon, and nitrogen. It gradually became clear that
the atoms of almost all the elements responsible for
the diversity of nature around us have radioactive
twins whose radiation enables us to trace their mo­
vement within even the most complex systems. We
shall not enumerate all the practical consequences
here of the remarkable work of the Joliot-Curies,
but there is not a field of science or technology where
artificially-radioactive labelled atoms have not been
employed. For us it is no less important that
the work of Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie beca­
me a turning point in the development of nuclear
physics.
It was after Fermi, studying the behaviour of arti­
ficial radioactivity by means of neutrons (in the
experiments mentioned above), discovered a way to
use neutrons as bombarding particles and the Ameri­
can Ernest Lawrence built apparatus in which elect­
romagnetic fields enabled charged particles to be
accelerated to high energies that the synthesis of
new elements could be attempted.
Since neutrons could be produced, for example, by
bombarding beryllium or some other light element
with alpha particles, any researcher who had at least
a hundred thousandth of a gram of radium at his
36
disposal could transmute elements and study what
happened.
The first synthetic element was discovered and
identified by Segre and his colleague, the mineralo­
gist Carlo Perrier.
In 1937 Segre visited the excellently equipped la­
boratory of the University of California in Berkeley
and took back to his little laboratory in Palermo
samples of molybdenum that had been bombarded
on its small, recently built accelerator or cyclotron
not with neutrons but with deuterons, nuclei of the
isotope of hydrogen, deuterium. Segre and Perrier
supposed that molybdenum, which had 42 pro­
tons in its nucleus, after bombardment with deu­
terons (which have one proton and one neutron)
would be transmuted into element 43 with 43 protons
in its nucleus. In the Periodic Table this element
should be located in the column that includes rhe­
nium and manganese, and be chemically analogous
to them.
After many laborious operations that Segre himself
considered equivalent to extracting ore from a mine
by hand they isolated an unknown substance and
demonstrated chemically that it was not any known
chemical element, though, as had been supposed, it
was very like rhenium. This was the first element
created by the hands of man, so Segre decided to call
it ‘technetium’, which means artificial.
The next artificial element, with an atomic number
of 85, was astatine, an unstable element obtained in
1940 also by Segre (who had emigrated from fascist
Italy to America) and his colleagues at Berkeley,
Dale Cordon and K. R. MacKenzie.
Segre, naturally, proved to be among the first who
tried to produce elements heavier than uranium. But,
as we know, the transuranic elements had more than
37
once treacherously and cunningly tripped up the most
astute researchers in the first attempts. It had also
happened to Segre. In 1939 he had observed that two
radioactive elements with half-lives of 23.5 minutes
and 2.3 days were formed in a thin target of an am­
monium-oxygen uranium compound after bombard­
ment with fast neutrons. The first was uranium-239
but there were extremely few atoms of it. The other
radioactive isotope behaved in a very peculiar way.
It was not precipitated when rhenium (in the view
then commonly accepted considered to be chemically
homologous to the new element) was used as a carrier.
Instead of being precipitated by hydrogen sulphide
from a strongly acid solution with rhenium, the
‘capricious’ element was precipitated, for no obvi­
ous reason, with lanthanum fluoride.
Segre’s short report of this experiment published
in the Physical Review concluded that the transura-
nic elements had not yet been discovered. By the
irony of fate it was Segre himself who refuted his
greatest discovery, the synthesis of the first transura-
nic element, because he could not escape from the toils
of traditional views that element 93 must be analo­
gous to rhenium since, according to the Periodic
Table, it should be found directly below rhenium.
The following year, 1940, McMillan and Abelson
(who, as we know, discovered element 93) repeated
Segre’s experiment and found that what had been
formed was neptunium.
Having studied the chemical properties of the new
element, they established conclusively that neptu­
nium was not chemically homologous to rhenium but
resembled uranium and lanthanum in its properties,
as Segre also had established.
Twelve isotopes of neptunium are now known.
All of them are radioactive. The first appreciable
38
amounts of the longest-lived of them, neptunium-237
(with a half-life longer than two million years), suf­
ficient for research, could only be produced at the
end of 1944, when Chicago University’s first nuclear
reactor was built. The difference between neptunium
and uranium is so slight that scientists had to look
critically at the arrangement of the heaviest elements
in Mendeleev’s Table.

RIDDLES OF THE TRANSURANIG ELEMENTS

This facilitated the search for the next, 94th ele­

ment in many ways. McMillan and Abelson establis­
hed that neptunium emitted beta particles in decay­
ing. Consequently, the decay product must be the
next element with one more proton, that is element 94.
It was discovered late in 1940 by Seaborg, Arthur
Wahl, Joseph Kennedy, and McMillan after bombar­
ding a uranium target with deuterons in the 60-inch
cyclotron at Berkeley used by Segre for technetium
and McMillan for neptunium. The new element was
named plutonium. No one then suspected that it
would become the star of the transuranic elements.
The production of new synthetic elements raises
three quite different problems of equal importance.
The first is how to synthesize and obtain atoms of
the new element, the second is to determine its pro­
perties or, as scientists say, to identify it, i.e. to
obtain irrefutable confirmation that the element pro­
duced is the one being sought. The third problem is
to isolate it, i.e. produce it in sufficient quantity
for chemical investigation. The last problem, it seems,
is probably the most difficult. The heavier the element,
the shorter is its life, the more difficult it is to get
39
 in quantity, and the more complicated the investiga­
to r’s job.
The first isotope of plutonium obtained in the win­
ter of 1940 was plutonium-239 with a half-life of
24 000 years. Another isotope plutonium-238 with a
half-life around 90 years was also obtained at Ber­
keley in the winter of 1941.
The decisive experiment was mounted in the small
chemical laboratory on the campus of the Univer­
sity of California on February 23. For the first time
a visible quantity of the artificial element was obtai­
ned. On that day the whole of the world’s supply
of plutonium could be put on the point of a needle.
But even then scientists had a shrewd idea of an unu­
sual property of the new-born element, that of being
fissionable by neutrons. In order to study this in such
a small amount of the substance, quite unusual re­
search techniques were needed. How to weigh and
measure an almost invisible quantity, two millionths
of a gram? Or how to dissolve and mix a substance
within a single droplet of liquid?
Burris Cunningham and Louis Werner developed
the new analytical chemistry of plutonium. They
built ultra-microchemical instruments designed to
measure an amount a million times less than that
usually manipulated in chemical research. They ma­
de capillary tubes for very small volumes of liquid,
of the order of a hundred thousandth of a litre, the
walls of which were lined with a water-repellent
substance. They also devised tiny pipettes that filled
by capillary action.
To digress for a moment, let us note that techni­
ques for measuring extremely small volumes of li­
quid have found wide application in biochemistry.
Certain chemical analyses of blood that used to require
numerous samples, and hence a great number of ex-
40
perimental animals, can now be done on a single
solitary mouse. With ultra-micromethods it can now
be determined where, how, and why poisonous sub­
stances (e.g. insecticides) are accumulated in the
organisms of insect pests, which helps to control
them. Ultramicrochemical techniques have revolu­
tionized embryology, the science of the development
of the foetus into a complete organism.
The first ultramicroscopic amounts of pure pluto­
nium compounds were weighed on a balance perfected
by the Italian biochemist, E. Salvioni. A quartz
fibre only three times as thick as a human hair and
ten centimetres long was attached at one end to a
support so that it acted like a very fine fishing rod.
The other end of the fibre was bent into a hook, and
from it the object to be weighed was suspended, held
on a pan of very thin platinum foil. By observing the
movement of the fibre through a microscope, it was
possible to weigh the plutonium compound with an
accuracy of hundredths of a microgram.
The ultra-microchemists joked that they had to
weigh invisible material on invisible scales. But
their labours were not in vain. The chemical proper­
ties of plutonium are now as well known as those
of ordinary elements, and it proved to be very inte­
resting chemically. It is perhaps the only element
that has four different states of oxidation capable
of existing simultaneously in aqueous solutions. A so­
lution of plutonium is fabulously beautiful as the
colour of the oxides changes as they pass from one
oxidation state to another. A solution of salts of
trivalent plutonium is a clear bright blue. During
the transition to the tetravalent state the colour
becomes a fresh green or rich honey tone. A solution
of the highest, hexavalent plutonium oxide is a sunny
yellow colour like a ripe lemon.
41
 Physically plutonium-239 is much more likely than
uranium to disintegrate (i.e. undergo artificial fis­
sion) when bombarded with moderated neutrons, which
makes it more valuable as nuclear fuel.
1942 had come, that hard year in the Second World
War. Almost all Western Europe was choking under
the fascist jackboot. The flames of battle blazed over
a vast expanse of the Soviet Union from the Neva
to the Volga. The Nazis were preparing to invade
Great Britain. Japanese submarines were attacking
American ships in the Pacific Ocean. Czech uranium
was being taken to Germany in sealed railway vans.
In occupied Norway a heavy-water plant was wor­
king at full capacity. In the USA a group of physi­
cists had been working in strictest secrecy for over
two years on designing an atomic bomb. Even closer
secrecy was clamped down on all work with pluto­
nium. On the basis of the research carried out on an
ultramicrochemical scale a big war factory had been
built at Hanford (Washington) to separate plutonium.
Plutonium was disclosing unlimited potentialities for
employment for either the detriment or the good of
man. Unfortunately, the world learned of them only
when the plutonium bomb was exploded over the Ja ­
panese city of Nagasaki.
With the building of nuclear reactors in which, as
a result of chain reaction of nuclear fission of ura­
nium, it proved possible to obtain a powerful flux
of neutrons that, used to bombard uranium, produced
plutonium, modern alchemy got its industrial start.
Plutonium was the first, and is still the only synthe­
tic element produced by the kilogram; total produc­
tion has increased a million million million times
in 25 years.
Having completed the most important chemical
experiments connected with producing plutonium,
42
Seaborg, Ghiorso, James, and Morgan turned to syn­
thesis of the next transuranic elements, 95 and 96.
But the business of extending the limits of Mende­
leev’s Table did not prove as consistent as could
have been wished.
It was more like a route march than a hike, Seaborg
and Ghiorso relate. A tough battle for an objective had
to be followed by a period for bringing up reinforce­
ments (in the form of new information and techni­
ques) before assaulting and capturing the next ob­
jective.
The interval occasionally lasted five or six years.
So it happened this time. Years passed and all attempts
to obtain and identify elements 95 and 96 suffered
fiasco. Failure followed on failure. The dramatic si­
tuation with neptunium repeated itself. The resear­
chers built their experiments on the data of the Pe­
riodic Table as it stood at that time and the Table
implied that the chemical properties of elements 95
and 96 should bear a strong resemblance to those of
neptunium and plutonium. But uranium, neptunium,
and plutonium (as had been established by 1944)
could be considered chemical ‘cousins’, though their
degree of relationship was not yet clear. It could be
supposed that the new, very heavy family of elements
began with uranium and formed a ‘uranide’ series
(i.e. ‘like uranium’), and the researchers were guided
by that in their long and fruitless quests. The undis­
covered elements stubbornly would not fit into the
niches intended for them in Mendeleev’s Table.
It was only at the end of 1944 that Seaborg concei­
ved the daring idea that the elements heavier than
actinium were perhaps not correctly placed in the
Table. He boldly advanced an original hypothesis
that came to be known as the actinide theory. It was
that all the elements heavier than actinium formed
43
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44
a special series similar to the rare-earth or lanthanide
elements and should be shown separately in an ex­
tended row below them (see Table 2).
On the basis of these new ideas elements 95 and 96
should both have certain properties in common with
actinium and with their rare-earth ‘relatives’, euro­
pium and gadolinium. It should also be characteris­
tic of them that they cannot be oxidized above the
trivalent state.
When experiments embodying these views were
mounted the scientists working on the Berkeley cyc­
lotron soon discovered (separated and identified) ele­
ment 95 (which they called americium in honour of
America, as its rare-earth homologue europium ho­
noured Europe) and No. 96 (which was named curium
in memory of Marie and Pierre Curie, since its rare-
earth homologue, gadolinium, had been named after
the Finnish chemist, Johan Gadolin, the pioneer of
research into the rare-earth elements).
Americium was obtained by neutron bombardment
of a plutonium target. The plutonium, having captured
a neutron, became heavier, then captured another
neutron, and emitted an electron from its nucleus as
one of the ‘extra’ neutrons was converted into a pro­
ton, thus forming the nucleus of americium.
Curium, too, was first synthesized by bombard­
ment of a plutonium target, but this time with helium
ions (two protons and two neutrons) instead of neu­
trons. The plutonium, having captured two protons
and two neutrons, became two units richer in charge
and, having emitted the ‘extra’ neutron, was trans­
muted into curium with a mass three units greater.
With the guiding thread of the actinide theory,
which neatly established that all elements beyond
actinium up to No. 103 belonged to one family and
had similar properties, it became clear to Seaborg,
45
Photograph of one of the first samples of americium
hydroxide obtained (visible in solution at the bottom of
the capillary tube). The head of an ordinary needle is shown
below the tube for comparison

Ghiorso, Kenneth Street,Jnr., and S. G. Thompson

just where and how they should look for them all.
But understanding did not make the job any easier.
Theoretically everything should have been simple:
bombard americium with helium nuclei (95+2=97),
one or two neutrons would be emitted and there would
be the new element. Similarly, bombardment of a
curium target with helium should yield element 98.
The only snag was where to get the amount of ameri­
cium and curium needed to make the targets. Nearly
five years were spent trying to obtain them. In 1950
46
 the americium oxide stored in a vial the size of a
sixpence was considered a very respectable stock. As
we have already said, the higher the atomic number
of an element, the less stable it is, the more readily
it disintegrates, and the greater is its radioactivity.
A trifling amount of curium dissolved in a capillary
tube no bigger than one’s little finger is so radioac­
tive that it can be photographed in darkness.
For all that Seaborg’s team at Berkeley prepared
the required targets in 1949-50 and having bombarded
them with alpha particles in the same cyclotron, dis­
covered the two new elements numbered 97 and 98.
It was found that they, too, were close in chemical
properties to their suggested rare-earth relatives. Ele­
ment 97 was named berkelium after the city of Ber­
keley, California, where it was discovered (in the same
way as its rare-earth analogue, terbium, had been
named after Ytterby in Sweden, where the rare earths
were first found). Element 98 was named californium.
Californium is chemically similar to dysprosium (which
means ‘difficult to get a t’). Its ‘godfathers’ explained
their choice of name not only by their wish to immort­
alize the state and university where the element was
first discovered and identified, but also advanced a
weightier argument: ‘The best we can do is to point
out ... that the searchers for another element a century
ago found it difficult to get to California.’
The new element was identified from an infinitesi­
mal amount containing not more than 5000 atoms.
The first weighable amount of californium (a little
more than 2 xl0~9 gram) was separated at Berkeley in
July 1958.
Clearly, one could not even dream of a target of
californium. It was necessary to think of a substitute.
But what? Luckily, serendipity came to the rescue.
The story of the discovery of elements 99 and 100 is
47
another striking example of unexpected results in
science.
It was 1 November 1952. A small atoll in the South
Pacific was lovingly reflected in the emerald waters
of its lagoon. The feathery serrated silhouettes of the
coco-palms barely swayed against the pearly dawn
sky. Then suddenly there was an unbearably bright
flash, and a fiery dazzling whirlwind with a terrify­
ing hissing that rose to a deafening howl. In a fraction
of a second the peaceful island was turned into an
infernal bowl filled with molten, evaporating lava.
It was called ‘Operation Mike’, the notorious ther­
monuclear explosion of 1952. On board battleships
and cruisers of the U. S. 7th Fleet, scientists and mi­
litary observers watched from a safe distance how
the island was melted and incinerated and reduced
to a glass crater a mile wide. The gigantic white radio­
active cloud rose at great speed to the stratosphere
and covered the atoll with a deadly canopy a hundred
miles across.
A fortnight later it fell out in rain. A peaceful
fishing boat was caught by it. Japanese housewives
were forced to use portable Geiger counters before
choosing their fish at Tokyo’s famous fish market.
But that was later. Now, in accordance with the
‘Operation Mike’, radio-controlled pilotless planes
were flown into the radioactive cloud. Special precau­
tions were taken when they returned to the aircraft
carrier; they were sprayed down with water and de­
activated by special techniques. The game was worth
the candle. The special paper filters attached to the
planes successfully sampled the lethal cloud for la­
boratory analysis by which scientists would be able
to explain what happened during a thermonuclear
explosion.
The first unexpected reports came from the Argonne
48
Glenn Seaborg (right), Nobel Prize winner
National Laboratory and Los Alamos, where the ato­
mic bomb was first made. The filters of radioactive
material contained new, as yet unknown, very heavy,
neutron-saturated isotopes of plutonium.
Scientifically, this was quite unexpected. It im­
plied that during the instant of a thermonuclear ex­
plosion uranium could successively capture not just
one or two neutrons but a great many, for its nuclei
were subjected within millionths of a second to the
effect of a veritable neutron squall ejected by the fusing
light elements. And that meant in turn that uranium
could be transmuted in these conditions into heavier
elements. For, as we know, a nucleus by emitting
a beta particle alters a neutron into a proton and is
thereby converted into the nucleus of the next element
in the Table By the instantaneous successive capture
of many neutrons uranium could be transmuted to
californium or even heavier elements.
4 -6 6 3 49
 The group at Berkeley promptly asked for material
from the explosion. Their very first attempts at se­
parating the radioactive mixture in ion exchange
columns reliably demonstrated the existence of some
unknown heavy elements. But what ones? In order
to learn that, it was necessary to secure amounts of
the material for analysis, hundreds even thousands
of times larger than available from the filters. So a
new operation was initiated, which some wit called
‘Paydirt’.
Hundreds of kilograms of coral were collected from
an atoll near the explosion area and taken with vast
precautions and in the strictest secrecy to Berkeley.
But to comprehend the secret of the coral and share
the impatience of the scientists, we must first con­
sider the facilities for chemical investigation of the
material.
The techniques of ion exchange and the high-speed
radiochemistry connected with it (if we can call it
that), had been developed under the direction of Sea-
borg. Its complicated sounding name conceals a sim­
ple but highly efficient method of isolating elements
closely resembling each other in chemical properties.
Imagine a dark stick made of a special resin enclosed
in a cylindrical glass jacket so that it can conveniently
be warmed (for most chemical reactions proceed more
quickly at elevated temperatures). Ion-exchange re­
sins are insoluble organic substances that do not con­
taminate the solution, and have a very effective capa­
city for reversible exchange of ions of like charges.
At the bottom of the glass cylinder there is an open­
ing as in a pipette. A mixture of elements is absorbed
by the upper part of the column, and an appropriate
solvent added, which dissolves the mixture and flows
drop by drop from the lower opening. One of the
elements dissolves more quickly and another more
50
slowly and layers form in the column from the ele­
ments in the mixture. By catching the drops one can
successively collect all the elements even when they
are as like as two peas and there is not enough to be
seen under a microscope.
Chemists who work with the rare-earth elements
are very familiar with this technique. The solution
dripping from the ion-exchange column is usually
collected in little platinum cups around the rim of
a turntable. The first few drops, the heaviest element
in the mixture (in this case, for example, californi­
um), drip from the column. Then the table is turned
a little. The next drops will contain curium, then
americium, and so on, until the operation is completed
with the lightest one. The amount of each element
in successive drops progressively decreases. The time
intervals between the dripping of the various elements
were accurately calculated and the amount of the
element in each pan determined by radiochemical
techniques. Thus the new elements could be reliably
identified by their behaviour in ion exchange resins.
The technique itself, of course, is far from new.
The best natural ion-exchanger, clay, constitutes the
bulk of the soil and retains water-soluble fertilizers
so well that even torrential rain does not leach them
out.
Back in 1858 the German chemist H. Eichhorn, by
mixing and drying solutions of sodium silicate and
sodium aluminate, produced a white jelly that served
as the first artificial exchanger. Ion-exchangers are
used as water softeners; the calcium and magnesium
that make water ‘hard’ are exchanged with their aid
for sodium ions as the water percolates through an
active layer.
A new era began in 1935 when the British chemists
Adams and Holmes reported having made a synthetic
4* 51
Ion-exchange apparatus used to separate actinide and lan­
thanide elements

resin possessing the properties of an ion-exchanger.

Scores of ion-exchange resins specially adapted for
various processes are now sold that are absolutely re­
sistant to acid or alkaline solutions. There are some
resins by which sea water can be desalinated. During
the war marines and paratroops had a compact ion-
exchange device, a plastic bag and six tablets, in their
kit. The tablets were cation exchangers of great capa­
city, charged with silver ions. In an emergency, a
tablet put into the plastic bag with half a litre of sea
water would turn it into drinkable water. The silver
ions combined with chlorine ions and were precipi­
tated, and could easily be filtered out with cheese­
cloth.
52
 Ion exchange is also employed to ‘soften’ cow’s
milk for babies, removing the excess indigestible cal­
cium. It is also used to purify the beet syrup from
which sugar is refined. It is even used to treat ulcers
of the stomach; an anion ion-exchange resin ta­
ken internally stimulates rapid neutralization of
hydrogen ions, i.e. reduces the acidity of the sto­
mach.
In biological research ion exchange is probably the
sole method both for separating complex mixtures
of closely similar amino acids (which are the consti­
tuents of proteins) and for isolating nucleic acids,
which are so similar in properties that they cannot
be separated by any other means.
Seaborg was the first to find a way of employing
ion-exchange resins to separate infinitesimally small
quantities of highly radioactive elements. He did an
enormous amount of work to find the appropriate solu­
tions and calculate how long it took each element to
elute, or wash out, and precipitate.
The Berkeley scientists shovelled hundreds of kilo­
grams of radioactive coral grain by grain into ion-
exchange columns. The ‘d irt’ proved an ‘El Dorado’.
The very first drops gave positive identification of
elements 99 and 100, though they contained less than
200 atoms of element 100.
The group of workers from Berkeley, the Argonne
National Laboratory, and the Los Alamos laboratory
involved in discovery of these elements suggested
calling element 99 einsteinium after the creator of the
theory of relativity, Albert Einstein, and element
100 fermium to perpetuate the name of Enrico Fermi.
In order to obtain isotopes of einsteinium and fer­
mium for research by a method less devastating than
a thermonuclear explosion, they had to bombard grams
of plutonium with an extremely powerful flux of neu-
53
trons. Later it became possible to use heavy ions
instead.
The 60-inch cyclotron at Berkeley was too small
for the purpose. It could only be done in a nuclear
reactor, exposing plutonium to bombardment by neu­
trons for a long period (between two and three years).
Only a super-thermonuclear explosion with its intense
neutron flux could shorten the process to millionths
of a second!
The plutonium to be bombarded was alloyed with
another metal and encased in aluminium. The canned
alloy was then moulded into rings that would cool
easily. The rings were put into the active zone in the
very heart of the reactor, and the heat resulting from
nuclear fission was removed by washing them with
water.
Some of the plutonium, successively capturing bom­
barding neutrons and emitting beta particles, decayed
into americium, which in turn captured neutrons and
decayed into curium, and so on.
The ‘fattening' up of plutonium nuclei with neu­
trons, as we already said, takes at least two years.
They not only become saturated with neutrons but
also undergo fission and disintegrate, which leads to
the formation of highly radioactive fission products
(isotopes of around half the elements that exist on
earth) as well as of transuranic elements.
Because of their harmful radiation, the ‘hot rings'
(which were worth thousands of times their weight
in gold) have to be brought to the laboratory after
exposure in massive hermetically-sealed lead con­
tainers. And they can only be studied in special ‘hot'
laboratories provided with well shielded boxes. All
operations are carried out by means of ‘mechanical
hands' manipulated by a scientific worker standing
behind a massive defensive screen.
54
 The shield is normally a concrete wall with a small
window of lead glass tens of centimetres thick. Mo­
dern ‘hands' sensitively obey the operator's move­
ments. They can take minute samples with their pin­
cers and put them into tiny pipettes, unscrew or screw
on lids, pour solutions, and even mop up spilled solu­
tion.
All the complicated operations are completed in an
ion-exchange column.
Several hundred thousand atoms of einsteinium were
obtained. The platinum cup of the ‘counting plate' with
droplets containing einsteinium was dried and tested
by means of an impulse height analyser or kick sor­
ter, an instrument that sorts out the radiation from
different elements according to its energy. The dials
of its counter record the number of disintegrations
of atoms of one particular element.
It was now the turn of element 101. It proved in
many ways to be the most thrilling and absorbing
page in the history of the Berkeley laboratory. The
plan, drawing on the experience already gained, cal­
led for bombardment of an einsteinium target, by the
most intense flux of alpha particles achievable in
the Berkeley cyclotron. The 99 charges of einsteinium
and two charges of a helium nucleus should give the
desired nucleus with 101 protons.
After long trials in the reactor in Arco, Idaho, about
a thousand million atoms of einsteinium, an amount
invisible to the naked eye, were accumulated and
isolated in the hot laboratory. Early in 1955 Sea-
borg's group decided to begin their experiments. No
one then could envisage that the main ones were still
ahead and would strain their every nerve, and that
fast chemistry would literally rival the speeds of
sprinters.
The nuclear reaction for bombarding einsteinium,
55
element 99, with helium nuclei is relatively simple:
einsteinium 2gg + helium £ -► element 2q®+ nq

It took place in a cyclotron, in which a beam of

helium nuclei struck a small target made of a very
thin disk of gold foil on the back of which an invi­
sible layer of einsteinium had been electroplated.
If any atoms of einsteinium were transmuted into
element 101 by the bombardment, they would be kno­
cked out of the target by the impact, so a second
piece of gold foil was put right behind the target in
order to capture them as they were ejected.
Both target and ‘catcher’ were put into a special
holder that had to be fixed inside the cyclotron directly
in the path of the bombarding particles. The powerful
stream of helium nuclei could be seen, if it was allowed
to escape from the target area into the air, as a thin
beam of blue light and would be photographed thro­
ugh the five-foot tank of water that served as viewing
window into the premises housing the cyclotron.
The whole cyclotron room was sealed off while the
target was bombarded. Bernard Harvey and Ghiorso
waited outside the water door a great tank of water
on casters.
‘We were really waiting for the starting gun in a
very unusual obstacle race,’ Ghiorso says. This first
experiment was expected to produce just one atom of
element 101, or maybe two. And these one or two
atoms had to be separated from millions of atoms of
einsteinium and identified in less than half an hour.
As soon as they got the all-clear Ghiorso and Har­
vey opened the water door and ran inside. Ghiorso
quickly pulled the target holder from the machine
while Harvey peeled off the second bit of foil with a
pair of tweezers and shoved it into a test tube. Then
56
he raced down the narrow corridors and up a flight
of steps to a temporary makeshift laboratory where
he gave it to Gregory Choppin, who heated it in a so­
lution to dissolve the gold. So they got a liquid con­
taining gold, various miscellaneous elements, and,
they hoped, a few atoms of the element they were
after.
The remaining chemical operations had to be made
a mile away, ‘up on the h ill’ at the Radiation Labo­
ratory. For the mad dash up the hill, Ghiorso wrote,
he was ready at the wheel of a ‘get-away’ car just out­
side the cyclotron building. They had (they hoped)
a few atoms of element 101, and their job was to iso­
late and identify them before they all disintegrated.
(Mendelevium is so short-lived that half of any sample
decays in about half an hour, becoming an isotope
of fermium, which in turn decays by spontaneous
fission.)
The precious drops were taken to the Laboratory
where Stanley Thompson was waiting with apparatus
to separate element 101 from the einsteinium, gold,
and whatever else might be present in the solution.
First the liquid was passed through an ion-exchange
column to get rid of the gold, which was held back
while a solution containing element 101 dripped off
at the bottom. These drops were dried and redissolved
and then Thompson put them into an ion-exchanger
to isolate element 101 from any others that might
still be present.
The drops coming from the column were caught,
one by one, on little platinum plates, which were dried
under an infra-red lamp, and then taken to a counting
room where Ghiorso put them into special counters,
one plate in each counter.
If the particular drop being tested contained any
element 101 it would show up as it decayed, for when-
57
ever one of its atoms disintegrates the exploding fis­
sion fragments cause a big burst of ionization, and
the pulse of current makes the pen on the recording
chart jump.
It is typical of these elusive heavy elements, Ghiorso
says, that we cannot positively identify an atom until
it ceases to be that element and decays into something
else. I t ’s rather like the man who only counts his
money when he has spent it.
On that anxious night during the first experiment
they waited more than an hour before the recording
pen jumped to the middle of the scale and fell back,
marking a line that meant the disintegration of the
first known atom of element 101.
Since this was quite an event at the Laboratory,
Ghiorso recalled, they connected a fire bell to the
counters so that the alarm would go off every time
an atom of element 101 disintegrated. It was a most
effective way of signalling the occurrence of a nuclear
event, but quieter means of communication were soon
substituted, following representations from the fire
department.
The Berkeley team found only about one atom of
the new element in each of their first experiments.
They repeated them about a dozen times, and finished
up with a grand total of 17 atoms.
But could the chemical behaviour of one or two
atoms unambiguously characterize its properties? The
conditions of the experiment, Ghiorso affirmed, al­
lowed them to answer that in the affirmative. Each
atom in passing through the ion-exchange column en­
tered the same reactions (adsorption and solution)
at least one thousand times, which provided a con­
vincing statistical description of each one.
Early in 1955 the world learned of the discovery of
element 101. The group proposed to call it mendele-
58
vium as a mark of recognition of the pioneering role
of the great Russian chemist who developed the Pe­
riodic Table and was the first to use it to predict the
chemical properties of undiscovered elements, and
whose principle had been the key to the discovery
of almost all the transuranic elements and would
preserve its importance as scientists went on to very
heavy nuclei.
The discovery of mendelevium was the culminating
point of the story of the heaviest elements. For the
next steps beyond uranium, mobilization of forces
and the bringing up of reserves, it was already clear,
would not be enough. It called for a new strategy and
tactics.
The atoms of transfermic elements are so short­
lived and are formed in such infinitesimal quantities
that their chemical identification, i.e. their isolation
in the pure state and determination of their chemical
properties, is out of question. But that was precisely
how evidence of the discovery of a new element used
to be obtained. Consequently, a new technique had
urgently to be found, as reliable as the old one, for
detecting and identifying new elements.
No fewer difficulties also awaited researchers with
the elements already obtained. All the eight synthetic
transuranic elements, without exception, from neptu­
nium to fermium, were produced, as we know, by ad­
ding neutrons to a target nucleus. Each new element
so produced was then isolated in weighable amounts
(in the way considered above for the ‘h ot’ rings of
plutonium) and then used, in turn, as target material
for synthesis of the next element.
The cyclotron provided accelerated neutrons or pro­
jectile particles, while the target particles were pro­
duced in a reactor; and isotopes of the elements al­
ready discovered were accumulated.
59
 ‘Mass production’ of atomic nuclei with longer half-
lives than those of the first isotopes of americium, cu­
rium and even of berkelium, discovered by means
of high neutron fluxes in powerful reactors, was begun
in 1954-5 and mastered by 1956-7. Decay of berke­
lium made it possible, a little later, to produce a
mixture of californium isotopes. But these ‘weighable’
amounts were not visible to the naked eye, and their
high radioactivity made them very hazardous for
those handling them. One microgram of californium-
252 emits some 180 million neutrons a minute. Even
when it is being produced in a reactor special safety
measures are required not to speak of work with these
all-penetrating particles in the laboratory.
They still remember in Berkeley, the accident in
1959 when they were trying to obtain element 102.
The window of the cyclotron blew out, for some rea­
son or other, and bits of the curium oxide target,
emitting millions upon millions of alpha particles,
flew into the test room. Dangerous radioactive dust
spread through the whole building. Fortunately, they
succeeded in evacuating people quickly and prevented
them from being irradiated. Only three weeks later,
after thorough decontamination of the building, was
it safe again to work in; and even much later activity
was still detected from time to time in the most unex­
pected places.
However difficult and complicated the problems
might seem, they could be solved some way or ano­
ther. Even bigger efforts, ingenuity, and virtuoso in­
ventiveness in the end would yield techniques suit­
able for detecting a single, solitary atom during the
few minutes of its life.
The main obstacle was that the very method of
producing new heavier nuclei (by successive capture
of neutrons and subsequent emission of beta particles
60
 and conversion of neutrons to protons) had become
unsuitable after mendelevium.
Theoretically it was reckoned that heavier and hea­
vier elements could be produced by intensifying the
neutron flux in reactors and lengthening the period
of bombardment, but in practice that proved not to
be so.
Judge for yourself: however much you intensified
the neutron flux, bombardment would have to go on,
if not for months or years, at least for hours or days.
It takes time for a nucleus to capture each successive
neutron. Element 100 (with a mass number of 256)
lives only two and a half hours, and mendelevium
(with a mass number of 256) decays by half in 90 mi­
nutes.
Even if element 100 could successfully be produced
by a powerful neutron flux it would disintegrate, even
without capturing neutron, into the nuclei of two
lighter elements with atomic numbers around 50, and
any further addition of neutrons would be pointless.
The further we go beyond number 100, the shorter
the life of nuclei. Their half-lives are reckoned in
seconds rather than minutes, so that a long time for
capturing neutrons is out of the question. A quite
new approach was needed. But what?
Let us look a little closer.
The nine transuranic elements synthesized by that
time had been produced by increasing the charge of
the target nucleus each time. But this had reached
its lim it. Further increase was impossible. And it
was also impossible to add many neutrons by succes­
sive capture.
How then was the charge on the interacting nuclei
to be increased? The most reasonable and promising
method, it seemed, was to try and increase the charge
of the bombarding nuclei. The same target was to be
61
bombarded not with neutrons or alpha particles but,
for example, with boron nuclei, which have five pro­
tons, or carbon nuclei with six protons, or even with
nitrogen nuclei with seven protons, rather as with
fast industrial building methods that use large pa­
nels or modules instead of bricks. Element 101, for
example, might be obtained by using a target, not
of the exotic einsteinium of which there is fantastic­
ally little, but of the more available americium, and
bombarding it with six-proton carbon.
It was a natural, almost obvious idea but scores
of difficulties soon arose of course. In order to see
what they were and learn how they were overcome,
let us turn our minds from the Radiation Laboratory
in Berkeley to the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic
Energy in Moscow.

HEAVY IONS

In 1953 the Kurchatov Institute did not yet bear

Kurchatov’s name. He was still alive and the head
of it, and his bubbling energy and scintillating ideas
inspired the work of all its research groups. G.N. Flyo-
rov, his pupil and closest colleague from pre-war days,
was selecting enthusiastic young people from among
the graduates of the recently founded departments
of nuclear physics in Moscow and Leningrad in order
to expand work on producing and studying super­
heavy elements.
‘What would you like to work at?’ Flyorov asked
Vitaly Karnaukhov, a newly fledged physicist with
a brand-new diploma.
‘Nuclear physics,’ Vitaly answered resolutely.
‘Q .K .’ Flyorov agreed. ‘Start work tomorrow.’
In much the same way he recruited Victor Druin,
62
I.V. Kurchatov, Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences

and thoughtful Sergei Polikanov, Nicholas Taran-

tin, Yuri Oganesian, and others.
Work began for all of them, in fact, the very next
day, very real, quite independent work that called
for unusual inventiveness and complete involvement.
‘We are going to produce elements that do not occur
in nature,’ Flyorov told them. ‘To do that we need
ions. Not simple ions but multiply charged ones, ac­
celerated to very high energies. Science doesn’t yet
know where to get them or how to accelerate them. There
are only suppositions. Would you like to think on
it? ’
Ions are electrically charged atoms. An ordinary
atom is electrically neutral. The positive charge of
63
its protons, as we have already said, is fully balanced
by the negative charge of the electrons orbiting aro­
und the nucleus. If we strip one or more electrons from
an atom or, on the contrary, add surplus electrons to
it, it will accordingly acquire a positive or a negative
charge and be converted into an ion. Depending on
the number of electrons lost or gained, the ion will
be singly, doubly, or multiply charged.
Many substances are combinations of ions, common
salt for example. It consists of a positive sodium ion
that has lost one electron and a negative chlorine ion
that has captured this electron. Between oppositely
charged ions immense electrostatic forces of attrac­
tion operate. If we could find the means of separating
the sodium and chlorine ions in a gram of salt and
put the one at the North Pole and the other at the
South Pole they would still attract each other with
a force of several tons.
Why are ions needed for reactions with heavy nuc­
lei, and not atoms? Two types of forces, as we know,
operate between atomic nuclei: namely, nuclear for­
ces of attraction, which come into play only after
nuclei are in surface contact; and electrostatic or Cou­
lomb forces of repulsion acting over considerably
greater distances, which prevent them from doing so.
Nuclei can only overcome the electrostatic barrier that
follows from Coulomb’s law (known as the Coulomb
barrier) if they have sufficient velocity (which is de­
terminable from the same law). An idea of the energy
involved can be obtained from the fact that, in the
bombardment of uranium with oxygen ions, it is
about 90 million electron-volts (90 MeV). That means
that special machines are needed—particle accele­
rators. But all existing accelerators impart energy
to particles by means of electromagnetic fields and
cannot affect neutral atoms. Consequently, only charg-
64
ed particles can be accelerated. In the Berkeley 60-
inch cyclotron, mainly the charged nuclei of the light­
est elements (hydrogen and helium), i.e. deuterons
and alpha particles, were accelerated.
So one had to design an accelerator for heavy ions,
which proved unbelievably difficult.
First of all it was necessary to find some way of
accelerating heavy ions to the energies needed to over­
come the Coulomb barrier. But that was not all. If
the number of new high-energy ions was insufficient,
reactions would occur very seldom, which meant that
it was necessary to contrive to produce very power­
ful ion beams. At the same time it was necessary to
meet the' following contradictory requirement: the
larger the charge of a particle, the higher are the ener­
gies to which it can be accelerated by an electric field,
but the greater its mass, the lower, naturally, is its
acceleration at the same energy. The ratio of its charge
to its mass (i.e. its specific charge) determines the
acceleration of a particle, and, consequently plays a
most important role in the design of an accelerator.
For protons the specific charge is unity ( Z= 1, A =1);
for deuterons and alpha particles 1:2 (for deuterons
Z = 1; A = 2; and for alpha particles Z = 2, A = 4).
The specific charge of heavy ions is always less than
unity.
The energy imparted to a charged particle in a cyclo­
tron is proportional to the square (a) of the intensity
of the magnetic field, (b) of the radius of the angular
velocity to which the particle is accelerated,, and
(c) of its specific charge. This implies that, when a
heavy ion and a proton or an alpha particle are acce­
lerated in the same cyclotron and at the same intensity
of the magnetic field, the energy imparted to the ion will
be much less than that imparted to the proton or alpha
particle. Thus, if the energy of alpha particles, for
5—GG3 65
example, is 28 MeV, then doubly charged nitrogen
ions will be accelerated to 9 MeV.
To increase the energy of ions it is necessary to
raise the intensity of the magnetic field, i.e. the power
of the magnet of the cyclotron. But that cannot be
done indefinitely because of the peculiarities of the
design of conventional electromagnets. That being so
it is necessary to increase the radius of the ion’s orbit,
in other words, to increase the size of the cyclotron.
That is why a heavy-ion accelerator has to be much
bigger than a conventional charged-particle accelera­
tor of comparable energy.
In spite of these difficulties, no one, it must be
said, was put off from trying to realize such alluring
possibilities. In 1940 the American physicist Luis
Alvarez was already trying to accelerate hexa-charged
hydrogen ions in the 36-inch cyclotron at Berkeley.
He succeeded in obtaining an energy of 50 MeV, but
the resulting beam was so weak that physical research
was ruled out at that time, the more so that cyclo­
trons could provide beams of protons, deuterons, and
alpha particles of an intensity of 1013 to 1014 particles
per second.
How was beam intensity to be increased? It took
decades to find out.
At first the so-called stripping method was tried.
A normal ion source is roughly a thick-walled gas-
filled chamber containing electrodes (a cathode and
an anode). When voltage is applied to the electrodes,
an ordinary electric arc—or powerful discharge—oc­
curs between them. The electrons emitted by the ca­
thode are accelerated in the arc and bombard the
atoms of the gas, ionizing them and changing it into
plasma.
Normal sources can easily supply singly and doubly
charged ions. But, as we have already explained, the
66
greater its charge, other things being equal, the greater
the energy gained by a particle. Therefore it is better
to accelerate multiply charged ions.
If doubly charged ions are injected into a cyclo­
tron operating initially below its basic frequency,
they will collide during acceleration with atoms
of the residual gas in the vacuum chamber, lose
some of their electrons, and become hexa-charged.
They can then be accelerated in the normal way,
at the basic frequency, to the energy required. High-
energy multiply charged ions with a beam intensity
of tenths or hundredths of a microampere, which is
adequate for many experiments, have been obtained
in this way in Great Britain, the USA, Sweden, and
the USSR.
Unfortunately, however, inherent trouble developed
that wiped out all the advantages of this method.
As the transition of ions from the low-charged state
to the multiply charged one proceeded all over the
chamber and at different times, the particles reaching
the target had a diffuse energy spectrum; while fine
experiments require mono-energetic beams—otherwise
it is out of the question to estimate the energy of in­
teraction with any definiteness and to calculate its
possible results.
The cyclotron could provide mono-energetic heavy
ions only if they were accelerated immediately at
the basic frequency, without charge exchange with
atoms of the residual gas. That called for much larger
accelerators than existed and also for powerful sources
of multiply charged ions; but early in the Fifties no
one had even dreamed of them. For that reason, and
a number of others, the Americans under Seaborg and
(lliiorso abandoned cyclotron (orbital) techniques of
accelerating heavy ions, counting them inexpedient,
and preferred to to use a linear accelerator in which
67
all the ions could be ‘stripped* simultaneously in
two separate stages.
In the early linear accelerators low-charge ions were
first accelerated, then stripped in a special device,
and sent on their way as multiply charged ions. To
control these processes highly sophisticated radio­
engineering equipment was employed. The first acce­
lerator of this type began working in the USA in 1957,
and a little while later a second, more powerful one,
known as HILAG (Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator).
With linear accelerators carbon ions with an energy
of 120 MeV could be obtained. The initial intensity
of the beam was 0.05 microampere, but various im­
provements and more accurate adjustment gradually
raised the current to 0.5 and even 1.0 microampere.

A MACHINE FOR ‘MAKING ATOMS’

Flyorov’s team in Moscow adopted quite another

approach. They preferred, in spite of all the difficul­
ties, still to use a cyclotron to accelerate heavy ions
since, once the difficulties were overcome, it offered
inestimable advantages; a reason of no little weight
was the fact that a 150-centimetre cyclotron was
then already working at the Institute of Atomic
Energy. The physicists decided to adapt it to
their ends.
It was quite clear that an ion source of unpreceden­
ted power, which could ‘strip ’ atoms efficiently, i.e.
multiply charged ions, must be ‘top of the b ill’. Heavy
ions could then be accelerated in the ordinary way
without recharging in the cyclotron, and a beam ob­
tained for experimental purposes.
To accelerate low-charge ions, pole pieces of too
great a diameter would be needed and, consequently,
68
a magnet of unreasonable size. To accelerate a doubly
charged neon ion to the necessary energy of 140 MeV,
for example, would require a cyclotron with pole
pieces 12 metres in diameter and weighing tens of
thousands of tons.
B.N.Makov, A. S. Pasyuk, and Polikanov cannot
help smiling now when they recall how they worked
in small basement rooms soldering, assembling, and
selecting materials, changing conditions again and
again to adjust a source designed to separate isotopes
in a mass-separator to their cyclotron. On the wall
hung a placard announcing in large hand-painted red
letters: ‘102 Will Be Ours!’ A small bulletin under
the placard gave a progress report on who had done
what that day.
In 1953-4 no one except those doing the work, and
of course, Flyorov and Kurchatov, took that bit of
fun seriously. The country’s major nuclear institutes
were studying nuclear fission, and busy designing
processes and developing reactors. The world’s first
industrial atomic power station in Obninsk, near Mos­
cow, was being groomed for starting up.
That was considered the main trend and the main
forces were concentrated on it. Even the late Prof.
Leo Artsimovich, member of the Academy of Scien­
ces, later the ‘God of plasma’, was then absorbed in
these problems. And here was Flyorov, a pioneer of
research into fissile materials, suddenly occupied with
problems that seemed so far from reality. It needed
the scientific perspicacity and intuition of Kurchatov
to appreciate and extrapolate the probable significance
of Flyorov’s ‘bit of fun’.
‘We rang Kurchatov up at all times of the day or
night,’ Flyorov recalls. ‘But we couldn’t do it over
trifles, so we had to make do as best we could.’
By 1955 the source was ready. It was a gas-dischar-
69
Gas-discharge chamber seen
from the side facing the ca­
thode

ge chamber made of thick furnace copper well cooled

by water. The chamber had two cathodes: a heated
main one, and an auxiliary reflector made of molyb­
denum set in a copper plate, also water cooled. The
walls of the chamber served as anode. The chamber
was filled with nitrogen, the gas whose ions were to
be produced first. The cathode was heated by electron
bombardment from an incandescent tungsten filament.
In the powerful arc discharge atoms of the gas were
stripped down to ions with several charges. In order
to strip off the greatest number of electrons and make
the ion as multiply charged as possible, it was vital
to get electrons of high energy at the cathode, and
higher than the electron binding energy of the gas.
An arc of great power was also necessary as the high-
energy electrons from the cathode had to be emitted
in a dense flux. The charged ions were to emerge thro­
ugh a narrow window (2 mm x20 mm) in the chamber
wall. The optimum size for the window had required
painstaking selection, altering, and testing. A win­
dow narrower than two millimetres passed too few
ions, while a very wide one (4-5 mm) made the source
70
work badly because of the effect of the high frequency
of electric field.
After long bench trials the source was finally fitted
to the cyclotron. And as usual dozens of things needed
adjustment and alteration. The magnetic field in the
tests had been 4000 oersteds, but was 19 000 in the
cyclotron, which immediately changed the ratio of
voltage and current in the arc. Fortunately, all the
difficulties were successfully overcome.
The new source could produce quadruply charged
carbon ions, penta-charged nitrogen ions, and pen-
ta-charged oxygen ions.
The experiments began and completely justified
their hopes. The multiply charged ions were accelera­
ted in the cyclotron into a uniform mono-energetic
beam. By Oganesian’s calculations, the difference at
the output was under 4 per cent.
Intensity, too, was very high. The beam of qua­
druply charged carbon ions was of the order of five
microamperes, that of the penta-charged nitrogen ions
about one microampere, and that of the penta-charged
oxygen 0.5 microampere.
Elated by their success, the physicists got on with
their experiments.
‘If we’d known then what we know now, we wouldn’t
have dared to begin such experiments,’ Druin jokes.
But then they were emboldened. They still had to
fiddle about with the targets and cooling devices, and
rack their brains over techniques, but for all that,
they at any rate began to get transplutonic elements
one after the other and succeeded in disclosing and
explaining some of the secrets of the inter-relations
of heavy ions and nuclei.
Still the red letters on the poster called: ‘102 Will
Be Ours!’ With element 102 everything involved im­
mense work. There were still very many unexplained,
71
 obscure, enigmatic things in the behaviour of acce­
lerated heavy ions and the response of target nuclei.
The nuclear reactions needed more thorough and de­
tailed study. And much more intense ion fluxes were
wanted, as it was necessary to strip atoms down to
six, seven or eight charges and to obtain accelerated
ions of much heavier elements.
In March 1958, in the picturesque town of Dubna,
on the Volga near Moscow, the first scientific confer­
ence on nuclear reactions with multiply charged ions
was held in the newly completed hall of the House
of Scientists in newly named Joliot-Curie Street, by
the recently founded Joint Institute of Nuclear Re­
search, scientific centre of the socialist countries for
study of the atomic nucleus. Apart from Soviet scien­
tists, the participants of the conference included re­
presentatives of research organizations in Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic,
Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, and Romania.
The morning session of March 11 was opened by
the Deputy-director of the Institute, Prof. V. Votrub
from Czechoslovakia:
‘We hope a new laboratory of nuclear reactions,
fully meeting the objects of our International Insti­
tute, will be functioning next year. Now we must
make thorough preparations for its work, discussing
all the aspects and difficulties of studying heavy
nuclei by means of multiply charged ions.’
£Our experience of work with extremely powerful
ion sources on the 150-centimetre cyclotron of the
Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy’, Flyorov dec­
lared, ‘has enabled us to draft and develop a scheme
for a new cyclotron specially designed to accelerate
heavy multiply charged ions. The apparatus, which
will be built at the Joint Institute in 1959, will have
a radius-to-field-intensity raticr approximately half
72
 as big again, or double that of conventional cyclo
trons. That will let us produce fluxes of all multiply
charged ions a hundred or more times as powerful.
And by going over to hexa- and hepta-charged ions,
we shall be able to accelerate considerably heavier
elements, in addition to nitrogen and oxygen. If the
final adjustments are successful, we shall have every
ground for hoping that the series of accelerable ions
will be continued up to iron, and perhaps further.
Multiply charged ions will make it possible to do qua­
litatively new things in nuclear physics. I would say
that these are the only particles suitable at present
for studying highly excited nuclei and filling the gaps
at the end of the periodic system. But successful work
on the transuranic elements calls for raising the
strength of the beams, which we hope to do with the
new installation.’
‘How do you expect to tackle the ever decreasing
yield of the distant elements?’ An. N. Nesmeyanov
asked; to which Flyorov replied: ‘By increasing the
intensity of beams and the weight of the projectiles
and targets. Now, with not very high intensities, we
are in a position to produce element 102, but there
are too many difficulties. The yield of the next ele­
ments is expected to be smaller still. A ten- or hundred­
fold increase would make the job much easier. We wo­
uld be able to do experiments with daily exposures
instead of hourly ones.’
At the evening session on March 12, I.M.Motora,
one of the co-authors to the scheme, talked about the
new accelerator.
‘As a matter of fact, our accelerator is a classic cyc­
lotron. On the simple principles worked out by Law­
rence back in 1930 and developed independently by
both Wexler and McMillan in 1945-6, the charged
particles pass through the same accelerating section
73
many times, gaining a small portion of energy each
time. The most important item in the cyclic accele­
rator is the magnetic field, which is primarily used
to produce the closed circular orbits. In big installa­
tions like ours, particles make many orbits during
acceleration, travelling thousands of kilometres. Any
perturbation can easily knock them aside. It is im­
possible, of course, to ensure ideal conditions for their
movement because, owing to the imperfections of
vacuum technology, there isn’t an absolute vacuum
in the accelerator’s chamber, and because of the hete­
rogeneous magnetic properties of the materials the
electromagnet is made of, and of inaccuracies in as­
sembly. Nevertheless, all this has to be co-ordinated
so that particles are deflected as little as possible
from the calculated ideal trajectory or, if deflected,
are forced back to the trajectory. Only then will the
accelerator work. The means for forcing particles back
onto the ideal trajectory are the configuration and in­
tensity of its magnetic field.
‘The basis of our machine is an iron electromagnet
shaped like the head of a trident, with cylindrical
poles. It weighs 2200 tons and has a pole diameter
of 310 centimetres. It should provide the axially sym­
metric field needed to accelerate heavy ions, i.e. ma­
ximal in the centre and falling off gradually toward
the periphery. At a distance less than the diameter
of the poles it begins rapidly to fade out.
‘What is bothering us? In classic cyclotrons gra­
dual attenuation of the magnetic field has pluses and
minuses. On the one hand, the attenuating field bends
the trajectory of the particle back to the mean plane
of the accelerator. On the other hand, this form of
field worsens the conditions for particles to accumu-

74
late energy, since the resonance character of the acce­
leration is disturbed. When you are dealing with heavy
ions these normal difficulties are sharply aggravated
because of the forced working regimes of the cyclo­
tron.
‘With the designed field intensity of 19 000 to
20 000 oersteds the radial drop will strongly affect
acceleration. That makes it necessary to boost or shim
the field somehow, that is to put additional masses
of iron (or shims) at the edge of the magnet in order
to intensify the field there and get the optimal con­
figuration.
‘The strength of the magnetic field is determined
by the magnetization current in the two main wind­
ings, which consist of 224 coils each. Maximum
strength (19 000 oersteds) can be obtained with a
current in the windings of 2600 amperes. To accele­
rate ions of different kinds the field can be varied from
16 500 to 17 500 oersteds.
‘The vacuum is expected to meet exacting require­
ments....
‘A rather large chamber (75 cubic metres) will
have to be evacuated to a pressure of a hundred thous­
andth (10"5) of a millimetre of mercury. That will be
done by six oil-diffusion pumps, with a capacity of
20 000 litres a second each. We have succeeded in
getting one litre of pump capacity per litre of evacuat­
ed volume.
‘How are we going to get acceleration?
‘In this cyclotron, as in others, it will be done by
means of an electric “boosting” field, sinusoid varia­
tions in which will provide the resonance contour of
the radio-frequency accelerating system. The cham­
ber will consist of two duants or dees (boxes open
on one side), tanks, and a high-frequency generator.

75
The frequency of the generator will be carefully held
constant, to a fine tolerance (up to 0.01 per cent).
The amplitudes of the accelerating voltage will be
quite large (300 000 volts at an earthing potential
on the dees of 150 000 volts).
‘What is there to say about the dees?
‘This very important unit of the accelerating system
of our cyclotron is unique in size, over four metres
long and about 1.6 metres wide. These huge boxes,
secured at one end only, must be very stable and
retain a given position for a long time without deviat­
ing even a few millimetres from the horizontal and
without sagging or becoming deformed.
‘First of all, a special design of dee has been de­
veloped with additional stiffening; the main beam of
the framework, for example, is shaped like a bent
rectangular box. Secondly, the shape of the dee has
been chosen so as to provide maximum opportunities
for experiment.
‘The specific feature of our cyclotron is the high
flux of heavy ions from the source. Some of the ions
are low-charge and take no part in acceleration. These
“parasitic” ballast ions bombard and greatly erode
the draw-out or exhaust electrode. Cyclotrons ordin­
arily employ a cooled slit electrode made of copper.
In a cyclotron for multiply charged ions such an elec­
trode would be rapidly and effectively eroded away
by the intensive ion bombardment.
‘We are looking for a design of slit optics suffi­
ciently stable under ion bombardment. It would seem
best to install a massive, well cooled, copper electrode
with erosion-resistant molybdenum plates.
‘The cyclotron will operate in either constant or
pulsed conditions, with the frequency adjustable wi­
thin a wide range. The main principle underlying
our scheme is to provide maximum freedom for fur-
76
ther improvement of the machine and to have reason­
able resources in case they are needed. For instance,
though we are designing a machine with an A/Z ratio
of seven, we have allowed all the same for reserves
of current and of the magnet excitation unit such
as would enable this ratio to be considerably in­
creased.
‘It will be possible to get ions up to krypton with
charges of seven, eight, or nine units. True, there are
difficulties not only in producing multiply charged
ions, but also in identifying them, since their A/Z
ratios become nearly identical the heavier the ions
and the higher the multiplicity factors of the charge.
With ions like penta-charged neon-22, hexa-charged
aluminium-27, or nonuple-charged argon-40, for exam­
ple, the A/Z ratios are respectively 4:40, 4:50, 4:44.
But the cyclotron will be able to separate ions with
a difference in A/Z ratio of the order of 0.2 per
cent.’
* * *

June 1959. A dusty, windy afternoon. On the block­

ed Moscow-Dmitrov highway drivers were venting
their impatience with angry hooting. Up the middle
of the road crawled a heavy lorry. On its trailer, under
a tarpaulin, was a bulky cumbersome object. And
ahead of it rode a police escort on motor-cycles. Thro­
ugh the lorry’s windows next to the driver, could
be seen the tired, tense faces of Oganesian and Boris
Zager. Though they had tried hard to slip through
and clear the highway by dawn before the traffic was
heavy, they had not managed it. They had been
forced to go across country, round railway bridges
and cross-overs. Any 15-ton bridge was too fragile
and unsafe a structure for the 40-ton component of
77
the giant magnet. And the railways had refused to
accept it for carriage as too bulky.
So here they were transporting it ‘in b its’. The
total to be taken to Dubna was over 2000 tons.
When all was said and done, transport of the magnet
was the simplest and easiest of the jobs that Oganesian
and his friends had to cope with in installing, adjust­
ing, and starting up this unique accelerator. Everyth­
ing they were doing was being done for the first time.
No one knew anything, everything had to be played
‘by feel’. The calculations were one thing, but it
verged on sorcery to fit this enormous machine to­
gether and assemble it not on paper but in fact. Eye­
witnesses allege that Yuri Oganesian actually
displayed the qualities of a magician and wizard;
there are no other words to describe the boldness,
resolution, and intuitive feel of the engineer that
this able physicist suddenly exhibited, to every­
one’s amazement, in setting-up their precious
brainchild.
‘W e’ll stick to the plan. If it doesn’t work, we’ll
alter it ourselves,’ he would say, resolutely suppres­
sing the doubts and jeers of the sceptics, quickly grasp­
ing the situation and finding the best way to eliminate
each ‘fault’ discovered. The ion source was found to
wobble; specially strong clamps had to be devised
immediately. Then the dees were sagging, disrupting
operation of the accelerator; a slightly curved de­
sign with the faintest of bends was worked out
that gave mechanical rigidity without affecting the
alignment.
At last it was done and the first beam was fired.
With early joy came new worries. The field strength
was not what was expected and the current was too
weak. Increasing the current, however, immediately
started lightning flashing in the central section of
78
the cyclotron where the ion source was located: break­
down! The continuous flux of ionized gas affected the
vacuum, but optimum extraction of ions called for
an increase in field strength. The result was one break­
down after another. They had specially chosen a de­
sign for the central section and carefully adjus­
ted the electrode system so as to obtain the opti­
mum combination of the highest ion currents and
a reliable vacuum gap during intensive ion bom­
bardment.
But one clear tranquil autumn morning proved,
perhaps, the most dramatic, the day when, after al­
most a year of faultless operation, the beam for no
obvious reason suddenly disappeared. The cyclotron
displayed not a sign of life and would not react to
the subtlest approaches and ruses. It did not work,
and that was that. For two days everyone in the la ­
boratory searched for the cause. Early in the morn­
ing the door of the director’s office, suddenly
opened and the duty operator, his eyes round with
horror and bewilderment, burst in where Flyorov,
Lobanov, Vyalov, and Oganesian utterly exhausted
after covering a blackboard with formulas and smo­
king countless packets of cigarettes, were napping,
some in armchairs, others on hard chairs.
‘Georgy Nikolaevich,’ he said, addressing Flyorov
and hardly opening his trembling lips, ‘the cyclotron
is falling to bits!’ And, disregarding propriety, he
collapsed onto a chair.
Twenty seconds later the whole staff of the laborat­
ory had gathered around the cyclotron, and in another
thirty seconds even theorists began to arrive from
neighbouring laboratories.
Under the pole of the magnet wound a distinct and
ominous crack.
‘Now you’ve done it! ’ someone said spitefully.
79
The Dubna cyclotron forjnultiply charged ions

‘How could you think of applying such a field? No

wall could stand it, let alone a magnet.’
Fortunately, a quick check showed that both the
walls and the magnet and cyclotron had stood up well
to everything and that the crack was due to a badly
welded pole.
What was to be done? Should they dismantle the
pole and take the whole great thing back to the works
again and repeat Oganesian’s odyssey?
They decided to do the job on the spot. The physic­
ists and chemists spent half a year poring through
books on welding, looking for ways to eliminate the
residual magnetic fields, which were so great that they
caused arcing during welding. The method decided
on was simple and reliable. They scattered tacks over
the magnet’s pole, which were firmly attracted by
80
the magnetic field, and then passed a current through,
raising and lowering it by manipulating the control­
ler until the tacks began falling off.
What could that mean? To be sure, everything did
not go swimmingly and manna did not fall from hea­
ven. The main thing, however, was that the cyclotron
was working again. And how it worked now! Every
epithet for it could be preceded by ‘most’. It really
was unique, this biggest, most powerful, most accur­
ate, and most reliable multiply-charged-ion accele­
rator (CMSI), the like of which had never been seen
anywhere outside Dubna!
Now, having seen that the cyclotron method was the
simplest, most reliable and effective way of producing
intense accelerated beams of heavy ions, other coun­
tries, too, began building them.
Eighty- and 88-inch cyclotrons have been brought
into use in the United States (at the Oak Ridge Na­
tional Laboratory, and the Radiation Laboratory
at Berkeley) and a 200-centimetre one in Orsay,
in France, and employed to accelerate heavy ions.
And a 175-inch cyclotron for heavy ions is being
designed at the Argonne National Laboratory in the
USA.
And of course not without reason. Though particles
with a much narrower energy spread than that of the
inner beams of the cyclotron can be produced on li­
near accelerations, the intensify of their beam is much
lower. This is also true of electrostatic accelerators
of the tandem-generator type, in which acceleration
takes place on the linear section as in a Van de Graaff
generator through the great difference in potentials
between the ends of the accelerating path.
Tandem accelerators are superior to ordinary single
stage Van de Graaff accelerators in both achievable
ion energy and operating convenience. The maximum
G G63 81
energy of tandem-accelerated particles is in the region
of, or above, the Coulomb harrier which, as we shall
see, is of paramount importance for observing certain
nuclear interactions.
Tandems are good for high-precision work, as they
provide beams of very uniform and stable energy and
the possibility of continuously altering it. They are
quite indispensable for super-accurate research into
the structure of the atomic nucleus, but the energies
attainable and the intensity of the beam are lower
than with cyclotrons, and for some research, for in­
stance for producing superheavy elements, they are
inadequate.
The beam of the Dubna cyclotron for the multiply
charged ions was 70 to 300 times as strong as linear
ones, which means that the number of ions passing
through the target in it was 70 to 300 times as many
as in any other existing accelerator.

WHEN ION STRIKES NUCLEUS

So 1961 came.
The best machine in the world was operating at
full pace. Heavy high-energy ions were carefully h it­
ting the targets, and the instruments accurately re­
cording the results of catastrophes and collisions.
What of interest had they communicated to date
on the inter-relations of ions and atomic nucleii* I t s
not enough to have excellent tools, it is still necessary
to know how to handle them and to have a clear idea
of their potentialities.
The reactions between compound nuclei proved
much more varied than those between the nuclei and
particles (protons, neutrons, etc.). And to sort out all
these very intricate processes was often not so simple.
82
 The lale Prof. Artsimovich compared study of the
interaction of compound nuclei with the art of a su­
persleuth who tries, by examining wreckage of a motor-
car, to find out the cause of an accident, recon­
struct how it happened, and even to sort out who was
guilty.
At the Amsterdam Conference in 1956, Dr. J .H .
Fremlin described certain features of their interaction,
but the data were still clearly insufficient.
But now that Soviet scientists had amassed new
experimental data, the principles of these interactions
had been established in general outline. All the pro­
cesses brought about by heavy ions can be very provi­
sionally divided into three groups according to the
character of their interactions with nuclei: (1) elastic
scattering, (2) grazing reactions, and (3) nuclear fu­
sion.
’ Let us take a look at the ‘hot zone’ of the cyclo­
tron, where the ‘projectiles’ hit the target, and try to
sort out just what happens there.
Elastic scattering can be compared to ‘love at a
distance’: the nuclei do not come into contact with
each other. In nuclear terms, they are a long way
from one another in the zone of operation of electro­
magnetic Coulomb forces of repulsion. But that does
not prevent them from mutual interaction affecting
one another by those same electromagnetic forces, es­
pecially when one of the interacting parties is a heavy,
accelerated, multiply charged ion with high angular
momentum. The electromagnetic field surrounding the
ion can, for example, so ‘whip u p ’ the target nucleus’s
electromagnetic field that, having absorbed energy,
it will begin to rotate and become excited. This is
known as Coulomb excitation of the rotational level
caused by elastic scattering.
In these circumstances, heavy ions naturally have
83
 a much more significant, appreciable, and varied effect
than light particles.
Electrical interactions can cause such excitation
that the nucleus becomes an isomer, changes its level
and, without altering its charge and mass number,
acquires other radioactive properties, in particular a
new half-life (which can vary within very wide limits,
from thousands of years to hundredths of a second,
depending on the properties of the old level and of
the newly acquired one, and the energy difference be­
tween them). As a result of elastic scattering a nucleus
may emit a charged particle or greatly alter its shape,
and the field of a heavy ion can literally distort a nuc­
leus, flattening it into an ellipsoid.
With grazing reactions, as the name implies, the
surfaces of nuclei either come into actual contact or
nearly touch one another. These reactions are also
known as ‘direct’. Nuclear forces come into action here
but the nuclei do not fuse (the energy being insuffi­
cient for that) but due to the tunneling effect already
described, stripping and capture reactions occur in
which, depending on the circumstances, the bombar­
ding particle either gives up a neutron, proton, or
alpha particle to the target nucleus or captures one
from it. These reactions were first observed at Birmin­
gham University during study of interactions between
ions of nilrogen-14 and oxygen-10 and aluminium
nuclei.
Later Volkov, Pasyuk, and Karnaukhov worked on
them under Flyorov, employing heavy, multiply
charged ions.
During stripping and capture reactions the energy
exchanged by the nuclei is not very large, so that the
kinetic energy of the bombarding particle that has
captured or lost a nucleon is not appreciably altered.
Grazing reactions also include the ‘shrapnel effect’
84
 first d elec Led by Dr. Fremlin in 1954, i.o. when the
projectile particle, colliding with the target nucleus
breaks into pieces, some of which capture the nucleus
while others are scattered.
In grazing reactions, heavy ions may either transfer
or capture several nucleons at the same time, or even
a bound group or ‘cluster’. Study of reactions in which
nuclei exchange whole complexes of nucleons yield
rich information on surface structure. For the probabi­
lity of one, two, or more nucleons being stripped or
captured greatly depends on their mutual arrange­
ment, and also on the inherent tendency of a heavy
ion to be located on the surface of the nucleus during
a direct or grazing reaction and to be absorbed into
it, which offers great possibilities for synthesizing
new isotopes and new elements and producing nuclei
with new qualities.
* The higher the energy of ions, i.e. the more it ex­
ceeds the Coulomb barrier, the more complicated and
varied the picture of the transfers becomes. Not only
are nucleon complexes transferred from nucleus to
nucleus but the nuclei themselves become excited in
the process. To get rid of the excitation, the nucleus
ejects a nucleon or a gamma-quantum. Just try to
sort out the wheels in such a smash-up!
The higher the energy of the interaction, the greater
will be the number of nucleons that will pass from one
nucleus to another. With sufficiently high energy per
nucleon (of the order of 5 to 10 MeV) the ion may give
up so many nucleons that it is, in fact, absorbed by
the nucleus. This is already the fusion reaction in
which a compound nucleus is formed. Since the fusion
of nuclei is considered, not without justification as we
know, to be the main way of producing new elements,
we shall go into it in greater detail as that will help
us understand the essence of what is to come.
85
 When 1lie physicists of Flyorov’s loam began stu­
dying the interactions of multiply charged ions with
atomic nuclei they had no clear idea of what it would
lead to. They decided to take as their starting point
the hypothesis of the formation of compound nuclei
advanced by Bohr in 1936. He, you will remember,
suggested that nuclei colliding with sufficient energy
almost instantaneously (the collision taking around
10-21 second) formed a compound system in which all
the excitation energy, according to the liquid drop
model, is more or less uniformly distributed among
all the nucleons. The excitation is then eliminated by
ejecting neutrons. But why neutrons? Because the
Coulomb barrier rather hampers the ejection of char­
ged particles. The formation cross-section* of a com­
pound nucleus depends on the energy of the impin­
ging particle as well as on its type; but the way exci­
tation is got rid of in Bohr’s theory does not depend
on how the nucleus is formed.
A compound nucleus has a very long life (in nuclear
terms), longer than an ordinary nucleus, and has time
to ‘forget’ its origin. Once formed, it behaves quite
independently; the way it distintegrates and the length
of its life have no correlation with its initial state,
and its behaviour may differ very much from that of
its parent-nuclei. Calculations made later by theorists
who based themselves on Bohr’s theory and introduced
corrections for nuclear-cascade transfer of nucleons
during direct or grazing collisions, agreed well with
experiments in bombarding targets with protons,
alpha particles, and deuterons.

* Formation cross-section is a concept analogous to the

cross-section of a current conductor, or a stream of fluid in
which certain phenomena are to be studied. The size of the
reaction cross-section is proportional to its probability.

86
 But now it was a question of heavy ions. Would a
compound nucleus always be formed? Would the theo­
ry hold for heavy ions? Only experiment could give
the answer.
At the Kurchatov Institute Flyorov’s assistant, A.S.
Karamian, and his young colleagues were already
studying the reactions from bombarding gold and
vanadium with carbon ions. They had chosen these
elements for two reasons. (1) They expected a com­
pound nucleus of zinc-64 to be formed. Its ‘behaviour’
had been described in the literature and it would be
possible to compare the findings and bring out the
special features of reactions with heavy ions. (2) Na­
tural vanadium consists almost exclusively of one
isotope, vanadium-51, which would make it easier
to interpret the results.
Ordinary nickel or aluminium foil was put into a
vacuum, in which either gold or vanadium was evapo­
rated to deposit a layer 0.2 milligram per square centi­
metre thick on its surface. A pile of the coated foil
was used as the target. The data obtained as a result
of the experiments were typical of the formation reac­
tions of compound nuclei, de-excitation being accom­
panied by rival processes with the emission of two,
three, or even four neutrons, depending on the excita­
tion energy.
It was thus established that when heavy ions and
a nucleus interacted the reaction did proceed in accor­
dance with Bohr’s theory, though with certain devia­
tions, to wit that the number of emitted neutrons did
not always increase with a rise in energy; even at an
excitation energy of 60 MeV, when the compound
nucleus was a strongly heated, ‘boiling’ bundle of
nuclear matter, occasionally only two neutrons were
expelled.
If we drop boiling water onto a red-hot frying pan,
87
it docs not spread on I but takes the form of a flattened
drop that runs rapidly around the pan without boiling
away. The drop gradually evaporates, but more slow­
ly than if it had boiled.
So it was here. It turned out that the neutrons car­
ried off too much of the excitation energy. The eminent
physicist V. F. Weisskopf suggested that some kind
of local heating was the reason. Sometimes, when a
multiply charged ion collides with a nucleus, there is
no time for the excitation energy to he spread over
the whole nucleus, which causes strong heating in one
spot, so that the escaping neutrons gain very high
energy. Thus the effect of multiply charged ions is to
give neutron a much higher energy than protons would.
The compound nucleus resulting from fusion of a
multiply charged ion and a nucleus of the target is
not only strongly excited hut has high angular momen­
tum, which is partly carried off by the escaping neu­
trons. But then their energy would have to be greater
than that corresponding to the temperature of the
nucleus. The Soviet theoretical physicist V .M .Stru-
tinsky calculated that the neutrons could not wholly
carry off all the great angular momentum induced by
the multiply charged ion. What happens to it is still
not clear. It may be that the nucleus emits a cascade
of soft gamma-quanta, or perhaps that the great angu­
lar momentum reduces the barrier to fission, and the
nucleus breaks up.
To be exact the importance of the research carried
out since 1956 has in general not been that it provided
answers to the questions that had been raised but that
the questions had been posed, particularly those that
needed close study. For in science it is just as impor­
tant to pose a problem correctly as to obtain results,
the more so when it is impossible to interpret the la t­
ter properly.
88
 Systematic experimental research into the probabi­
lity of a compound nucleus being formed in reactions
between complex nuclei is not yet finished. There is
still no clear, unambiguous answer why the life of a
compound nucleus is sometimes vast (on a nuclear
scale), whereas at other times it is quite short. The
lifetime of many compound nuclei has already been
established and found not to depend on that of their
parent-nuclei, but it is still not wholly clear why a
certain type of decay predominates in the competition
to carry off excess excitation. Can any means of getting
rid of the energy be imposed on the nucleus? Is it even
possible in principle? These questions are still difficult
to answer, but the conditions are known, and have
been experimentally established for certain nuclei,
when they tend to emit neutrons or to get rid of the
energy by a cascade of gamma-quanta. And that is
of great significance since fusion of nuclei is the prin­
cipal way of creating superheavy atoms.
All these problems are of burning interest and it is
difficult to exaggerate their importance. So we shall
consider in detail how they were tackled in the Labora­
tory of Nuclear Reactions of the Joint Institute of
Nuclear Research. But before we do so let us once more
recall Dmitry Mendeleev.

PLAYING NUCLEAR PATIENCE

Mendeleev’s remark about the need to observe cer­

tain guiding rules when picking mushrooms is also
true for many other activities; and for understanding
Nature’s hidden secrets it is a thousand times appli­
cable.
In order to create a new nucleus, or even to study one
obtained, it is not sufficient to have the most perfect
tools; the most powerful cyclotron, multiply charged
89
ions, or the most sensitive instruments will be of no
use if one does not at least have a vague idea of what
the thing one wants to obtain should be like. In crea­
ting matter it is necessary to have some idea of the
rules of its life, otherwise it will be still-born.
It is obvious when you think about it.
The essence of the Periodic Table is that the way the
elements (i.e. atoms) are arranged, horizontally and
vertically, determines their principal physical and
chemical properties, which obey clear and exact laws,
and enables us even to predict the properties of ele­
ments quite unknown. If a similar orderly system,
embracing the properties of absolutely all isotopes
were created in the field of atomic nuclei, the work
of the creators of new elements would be much easier,
as they would have almost all the recipes (or at least
rough notes of them).
Unfortunately, the known laws that govern one or
other of the isotopes of any element are far from as
clear and exact as for atoms; and the lives and types
of decay of isotopes (and it is difficult to choose the
best method of research without knowing them) often
surprise theorists and experimenters or lead them up
the garden path. But that is by no means evidence of
lack of zeal on their part.
Mendeleev was concerned with the fifty or so unsys­
tematized chemical elements then known. It is said
that, in trying to understand their relationship, he
time and again ‘played patience’ with the cards bea­
ring their names and atomic numbers. But, as he joked
later, he saw the famous Table in his sleep.
Now there are 104 elements in the Table, and each
of them has several heavy and light isotopes. The total
number found in nature or synthesized is around 1600,
and around 5000 are thought to exist. It is not so simple
to play patience with a ‘pack’ that thick.
90
 Ernest Rutherford, the discoverer of the atomic
nucleus, said at the beginning of the century that the
periodic system of nuclei would be much more compli­
cated than that of atoms, and that a curved surface
would probably be needed to illustrate it, rather than
a flat one as with the periodic system of chemical ele­
ments.
His words proved prophetic. For thirty years the
history of nuclear physics has abounded in attempts
to get the game of nuclear patience to come out, but
none of the systems suggested has been accepted, and
the opinion even hardened that the task was insolub­
le.
But, for all that, some progress had been made.
Though there were still many blank spots on the
chart of isotopes, something very important had al­
ready been cleared up and was even being used for
practical purposes. Isotopes with an even number of
particles in their nuclei are known to be very stable;
suffice it to recall the magic numbers. Odd nuclei,
which disintegrate rapidly on the contrary are extre­
mely unstable, especially odd-odd ones; those with
an odd number of protons (the number of protons is
equal to the element’s atomic number Z) and an odd
number of neutrons (N = A —Z).
A stable atomic nucleus is a very steady system;
lo eject a proton or a neutron from it, an energy (known
as its binding energy) of several million electron-volts
is needed. The stability of a nucleus results from the
operation of powerful nuclear forces of attraction.
But the degree of nuclear attraction essentially de­
pends, obviously, on the neutron-proton ratio N/Z.
The most stable N /Z ratio (in the case of light nuclei)
is unity.
In Flyorov’s laboratory they have drawn up a
‘stability chart’ showing the limits of the nuclei that
91
Chart of tho stability of atomic nuclei

are most likely to exist. Each point on the chart cor­

responds to an isotope of a particular element with a
certain mass. The number of protons in the isotope is
plotted against the vertical axis, and the number of
neutrons along the horizontal one.
At the lower left corner of the chart the Nj Z ratio
is unity and, at the upper right corner, where the stab­
le nuclei of heavy elements are shown, it is approxi­
mately 1.5. A deviation from these values indicates
a lowering of stability. Let us take the isotopes of
hydrogen as an illustration. The isotope with one
proton Hi is ordinary hydrogen, which is a stable
and very widely distributed formation. Hydrogen
with one proton and one neutron Hi, or deuterium,
is also stable.
Tritium, Hi, that is hydrogen with one proton and
92
two neutrons, has an NIZ ratio of 2:1. This heavy
isotope is radioactive and disintegrates (its half-life
being 12 years).
Just as in the table of the elements there can be che­
mically active and inactive elements, so on the chart
of isotopes there are regions where all the elements
and their nuclei are more or less stable. The boundary
of stability for heavy nuclei lies around lead and bis­
muth. Then comes a region of highly unstable radioac­
tive nuclei that disintegrate rapidly, the boundaries
of which define, in fact, the total number of isotopes
that can be obtained. As can be seen from the chart,
this number is much greater than what we already
know. But that is not all. The boundaries indicate the
directions that are of interest for research and the types
of disintegration typical of a particular direction.
Among the isotopes that can exist but are not yet
known there are many with interesting properties.
The upper limit of the field of isotopes is determined
by a proton binding energy close to zero, and the lo­
wer lim it by a neutron binding energy of zero. The
regions most tempting for researchers are in the boun­
dary zones. In the left-hand part of the table are nuc­
lei with an abnormally small number of neutrons (i.e.
neutron-deficient ones). What are their properties and
peculiarities? In the right-hand part are nuclei witli
an excess of neutrons and a deficiency of protons, for
which intensive transformations of the nucleons ( pt ^n)
and all the types of beta-negative decay are characte­
ristic.
At the top of the chart is a region of superheavy
nuclei that may possess most unexpected properties.
The heavier the nucleus, the more it is liable to break
into fragments, so that their predominant type of decay
is spontaneous fission.
The further a nucleus is from the line of stability,
93
the shorter ils half-life, and the less stable it is. Nuc­
lei cannot exist beyond the limits of the field of isoto­
pes.
This chart of nuclear stability based on the proton/
neutron ratio can serve us as a guide for our journey
through the world of atomic nuclei. With it we can
clearly trace the trends of the research that are consi­
dered basic at Dubna.
Research into boundary conditions always, as a
rule, presents special interest. An unexpected world
opens up before scientists in the region of ultralow
temperatures, ultrahigh pressures, ultrahigh tempera­
tures (when matter becomes ionized gas or plasma),
and superhigh energies involving the interaction of
elementary particles. Humanity is quite rapidly feel­
ing the results of penetration of this world in the form
of new material wealth.
The extreme proton/neutron ratio is realized in the
atomic nuclei lying very close to the boundary of their
existence. For atomic nuclei boundary condilions in
nucleon ratio (proton-neutron) lie at the limits of their
possible existence; and in investigating them physi­
cists obtain important results and interesting infor­
mation on the properties of nuclear matter.

A NEW TYPE OF RADIOACTIVITY

Let us continue our journey, consulting our chart

now and again.
Do you remember Vitaly Karnaukhov, the resolute
young fellow who came to Flyorov almost before his
diploma was dry, and immediately found himself at
the centre of events? He is now an experienced expe­
rimenter leading a group in the Dubna Laboratory
of Nuclear Reactions that is blazing new paths and
filling in the gaps in the isotope chart where Nj Z
94
 is less than unity and where (to the left of the stability
line) neutron-deficient nuclei arc to he found. How
do these nuclei behave? That remained a puzzle for
some time.
It all began in Moscow back in the autumn of 1954,
when dreams of powerful ion-projectiles began to take
real shape. During those exhausting and strenuous
days, when nothing was yet clear but many things
were already beginning to stand out, the active and
indefatigable Flyorov, constantly bubbling with ideas,
kept his little group in a tension of continuous search.
Once, coming straight back to the laboratory late
at night from an important conference at the Academy
of Sciences, he began to talk nonchalantly from the
doorway, while still in his overcoat, of an idea that
had struck him during a private conversation—the
possibility of there being special nuclei that were pro­
ton emitters. Then, passing on to other matters, he
threw out his usual favourite remark almost by the
way:
‘Think it over, V italy.’
It worked like a virus. Once it got into a man’s
mind it gave him no peace, and gradually took posses­
sion of him, little by little.
Vitaly thought it over. At first incidentally, in odd
spare moments between his hectic work and his dreams
of future experiments to synthesize elements 102, 103,
and 105. One day young Prof. Goldansky, a nuclear
chemist, bubbling with ideas like Flyorov and apt
to be carried away by them, came to the Institute.
He and Karnaukhov began talking quite by chance.
Goldansky proved not only to be marvellously know­
ledgeable about the problem but to be working on his
own original hypothesis of proton emitters.
But what is this proton radioactivity? What are the
conditions needed for it? This is the point to talk about
95
radioactivity in greater detail. First of all, let us de­
fine more precisely what we mean by it.
Radioactivity used to mean any spontaneous nuclear
disintegration involving the emission either of alpha
particles or of electrons, independent of how long it
lasted. Then, as radioactive nuclei began to be obtai­
ned in various nuclear reactions, it was naturally asked
how long a compound nucleus, for example, would
live before the ‘first act’—its formation—could be
considered completed, and when the ‘second act’—
radioactive disintegration—began. It was established
that the two stages of a nuclear reaction (the first,
when the bombarding particle a and the target nucleus
A fused to form a single exeited compound nucleus K\
and the second, when nucleus K disintegrated into par­
ticles b and a nucleus B) could be considered separate,
if the life of nucleus B considerably exceeded the maxi­
mum duration of nucleus K (10"14-10~13 second).
Otherwise the characteristics of the decay of nucleus
B would depend on the properties of nucleus K .
Study of radioactivity had also enlarged the ‘range’
of its basic types. Instead of the three elementary ra­
dioactive processes known at the middle of the century,
the nuclear ‘ABC’ now numbered five: alpha decay;
three types of beta decay (emission of electrons or
positrons or capture of an orbital electron); gamma
radiation; the spontaneous division of a nucleus into
two fragments (fission); and proton emission.
Only alpha decay and one of the types of beta decay
(emission of an electron) have been observed in natural
radioactive isotopes. All the other transformations
have been discovered in synthesized isotopes.
Alpha decay, or the emission of alpha particles
(helium nuclei), was discovered by Rutherford in 1898.
With this type of decay the charge of the nucleus
diminishes by two units and its mass by four units,
96
because it simultaneously loses two protons and two
neutrons.
Beta decay with the emission of an electron was also
discovered by Rutherford in 1898, while investigating
the radioactivity of uranium salts.
It became clear much later that, in this type of de­
cay, a neutron is changed into a proton within the
nucleus with the emission of an electron and an anti-
neutrino, which explains why the decay is accompa­
nied with the escape of fast electrons. The mass of
the nucleus does not change but the charge increases
by one unit.
Beta decay with the emission of positrons (positi­
vely charged electrons) was first noted by the Joliot-
Curies during the decay of a synthesized nucleus. In
beta-positive decay a proton is converted into a neu­
tron with the ejection of a positron and a neutrino. By
emitting a positron the nucleus reduces its charge by
one unit.
Beta decay with the capture of an electron was dis­
covered in 1937 by that brilliant experimenter and
Nobel Prize winner, Luis Alvarez.
Sometimes the nucleus captures an electron from
the shell nearest to it, and then one of its protons,
having emitted a neutrino, is transformed into a neu­
tron. On one occasion a nucleus may be transformed
by electron capture, and on another occasion undergo
positron decay.
If we consider the scheme of beta decay:
n p + v; P -f- e+ + v; and p + -* n + v
we can easily see that all the nucleons can be transform­
ed into each other by transposing particles from the
left side to the right side, replacing one particle of
a pair by its antiparticle: an electron by a positron,
a neutrino (u) by an antineutrino (u). For that reason
7 -6 6 3 97
P" and p+ decay and electron capture are treated as
varieties of a single elementary radioactive process—
beta decay.
Gamma decay was discovered in France by P. Vil-
lard in 1901. In this type of decay the nucleus emits
gamma-quanta, i.e. electromagnetic radiation of short
wavelength, and no transmutation of elements occurs.
But gamma-quanta may sometimes be emitted by nuc­
lei in isomeric states.
Spontaneous fission of heavy nuclei was discovered
in 1940 by Petrzhak and Flyorov. Its possibility had
been suggested by Niels Bohr in the late Thirties (in
1939). In this radioactive transformation the nucleus
spontaneously breaks down into two fragments of
comparable mass.
Proton radioactivity. The possibility of such decay
(with the emission of protons) had already been posed
by the Soviet physicists A.B.Migdal, B.T.Heilig-
man and B.S. Jelepov in the late Forties. They had
reached the conclusion that it could quite probably
be detected experimentally. Jelepov had even indica­
ted the region where it could be anticipated.
Developing this idea, Goldansky suggested in 1960
that two-proton radioactivity (i.e. emission of two
protons) should be observed with nuclei of the even
elements (up to calcium) and gave a detailed descrip­
tion of the phenomenon. To substantiate it he drew
a witty analogy with the pairing of electrons possessing
contrary spin*. Although electrons have identical ne­
gative charges, it is known that in certain conditions
(in particular with a sharp drop in temperature) they
* Spin is a term denoting the intrinsic angular momentum
of microparticles, which has a particular quantum character
and is independent of the orbital motion of the particle. It
can be roughly illustrated by picturing the particle as a re­
volving body.

98
form pairs, releasing energy in doing so. Electron pair­
ing is responsible for such phenomena as the chemical
bond in molecules, and superconductivity (when a
metal loses resistance to the passage of an electric
current). In certain conditions, it would seem, the pro­
tons in the nucleus can also pair. Occasionally it pro­
ves more advantageous for a nucleus to eject two pro­
tons at once than to tear them apart.
Why should the nucleus prefer to decay in one way
rather than another? What are the laws and mecha­
nisms governing radioactive decay?
The answers are still sought by purely statistical
ways. As we know, the laws concerned were then only
being groped after. But thanks to a scheme suggested
by I.P. Selivanov we can assess certain features of the
various types of beta decay.
It has been established that 46 per cent (almost
half!) of naturally occurring or synthetic elements
prefer beta-negative decay (electron emission).
The ejection of a positron, another type of beta ra­
dioactivity, has been observed in only 11 per cent of
known nuclei, and these are all synthetic ones prac­
tically unknown in nature.
About a quarter of all radioactive nuclei are trans­
muted by means of electron capture.
Occasionally a ‘radioactive fork’ is observed—the
nucleus can decay in one of various ways. Why?
Simply because, in striving for stability, a nucleus
with a preponderance of protons, i.e. in which NJZ
is greater than unity, will either reduce the numerator
of the fraction or increase the denominator; this means
that the neutrons will be transformed into protons,
and so there will be beta decay. Hence, beta-negative
decay is typical of radioactive isotopes with a surplus
of neutrons, i.e. of the heavy isotopes of various ele­
ments.
7* 99
 Around 10 per cent of all known isotopes emit alpha
particles. This is the type of decay best studied. The­
re are around 160 alpha-active isotopes, primarily
those with Z higher than 80, i.e. isotopes of heavy ele­
ments. It can also occur in lighter elements (for
instance in samarium and other rare-earth elem­
ents) owing to certain features of their nuclear struc­
ture.
Finally, for very heavy nuclei, in particular those
of transuranic elements, the predominant mode of
decay is spontaneous fission. The charge of the nucleus
is so high that it requires less energy for it to disinte­
grate of itself without external interference. Among
the naturally occurring radioactive nuclei, those of
thorium-230, thorium-232, uranium-234, uranium-235,
and uranium-238 undergo spontaneous fission. (Spon­
taneous fission has been detected in around 30 isotopes
of the transuranic elements, and in the heaviest ele­
ments it occasionally predominantes over alpha de-
cay.)
And then there is the ejection of protons. That,
clearly, can only occur in nuclei experiencing a very
acute shortage of neutrons; otherwise they would pre­
fer some type of beta decay. When and under what
conditions will such a shortage occur, and what sets
its limits?
So, Karnaukhov thought and thought, and the more
he thought the keener he became on the idea. He
‘infected’ Nicholas Tarantin, and the two of them
would set down on paper the way the future experi­
ment should go, trying to predict nuclei ‘suspected’
of proton radioactivity. Soon they were consulting
Flyorov and comrades about one version or another.
Flyorov believed heavy ions could be used to produce
unstable neutron-deficient nuclei. Karnaukhov was
deciding on the most advantageous reactions and was
100
 so absorbed in it that it seemed a nuisance to him to
have to do anything else.
The idea of the search for proton emitters was ma­
turing like a novel —to begin with an outline, a vague
general plot, then the details, and finally complete
harmony.
At long last the most powerful ‘wonder gun’, shoot­
ing charged ions, was at their disposal. They no longer
worked in small basement rooms but had moved to a
beautifully equipped laboratory, in fact, a real modern
institute with roomy offices, light laboratories, and
their own machine shop.
But, as usually happens, everything proved dozens
of times more complicated than it had seemed in theo­
ry, and it took them another three years of strenuous
effort in order finally to set up the experiments.
Karnaukhov’s group—Vladimir Subbotin, a radio
engineer, Gurgen Ter-Akopian, a physicist, Nicholas
Danilov, the laboratory assistant, and Leonid Petrov,
only just graduated—themselves assembled and ad­
justed the rather complicated equipment they had
designed.
The complication was that, by all accounts, proton
emitters should be very short-lived; so the classical
way of studying new isotopes after chemical isolation
was quite inapplicable. Their instrument had not only
to register radioactive decay but also to determine
precisely what kind of decay the isotope preferred. It
had also to define and give unambiguous evidence of
what kind of particle had escaped from the nucleus
(electron, alpha particle, or proton); for to cover the
shortage of neutrons, the ‘deficient’ nucleus may
choose any mode of decay.
In order to determine exactly what particle has es­
caped, scientists make use of the capacity of particles
of different velocities to be decelerated in a substance.
101
By simultaneously measuring a particle’s energy and
rate of deceleration, it is possible to identify it
very accurately.
The instrument had to be mounted as close to the
cyclotron beam as possible, i.e. it had to operate in
a very strong magnetic field, in high vacuum, and near
electrodes that had been given a high-frequency vol­
tage of 300 kilovolts!
The ‘probe’ was constructed first. It looked like a
stylized metal wolf: the square metal ‘head’ contained
all the instruments that were to be inserted into the
‘muzzle’ of the cyclotron. Any other recording instru­
ments needed were put in the elongated ‘body’. The
‘legs’ had wheels for convenience in shifting it. The
‘head’ was protected by a shield and had a ‘telescope’
mounted on it during the first experiments, consist­
ing of two gas counters to record nuclear decay. A
particle emerging from the nucleus during decay wo­
uld pass through the two counters; the first would
measure its rate of deceleration, and the second its
energy. The signals from them were to be processed
by electronic equipment.
Karnaukhov and Ter-Akopian started their experi­
ments early in the morning on Saturday, 30 June 1962.
Mounted in the path of the beam of accelerated neon-
20 ions in the cyclotron was a target of thin sheets of
nickel foil.
‘Attention! Cyclotron on!’—warned a flashing no­
tice. In a room away from where the instruments
were, the two men pressed close to the screens and
watched the tape of the recorder.
Under bombardment with accelerated neon ions, the
nucleus of nickel should capture an ion and form
a heated compound nucleus. On cooling it should emit
neutrons and gamma-quanta. Eventually, there would
be an excess of protons; their binding energy would
102
 be greatly reduced, and the nucleus would be forced
to emit a proton in order to find a stable state.
But—the expected effect was not observed. Or rath­
er it was, but there was no firm assurance that every­
thing was really as supposed. The number of beta-ac­
tive nuclei formed during the reaction was a million
times greater than that of proton emitters. The proton
‘shot’ had taken place on a background of countless
electron ‘machine-gun’ bursts.
Karnaukhov and Ter-Akopian spent the whole of
Saturday night, and all Sunday, Monday, and Tues­
day, trying to find how to eliminate the electrons and
their jamming background. Suddenly it dawned on
Gurgen that the shielding window in the cover of the
instrument should be shifted so as to become inacce­
ssible to electrons.
They experimented again. At last protons, real
protons, as they say, poured through—but ‘poured’,
of course, on a nuclear scale. In ordinary terms it was
more like looking for a needle in a haystack. But call
it what you will, a new kind of radioactivity had been
discovered. And though success was rather dragged
out in time, it was a triumph!
The Learned Council of the Joint Institute reported
the results of the experiment to the third international
conference on reactions between compound nuclei
held in the United States in April 1963. Reporters
from Moscow papers, radio, and television rushed to
Dubna to interview Karnaukhov. Friends hastened to
congratulate him. But he, it must be said, was rejoi­
cing least of all. To be frank, he was simply furious.
He hated reporters. Though generally noted for a quite
peaceful disposition, he was if anything stubborn and
not the least inclined to show off. It was simply, as
he then admitted, that what he needed at that moment
of triumph was not the beating of drums but a busi-
103
ness-like, human, heart-to-heart talk; and the naive
questions of the uninitiated simply irritated him.
Why? There were two reasons. For one thing, that
was his character; and for another, he was too young
to have learned indulgence. But there were other rea­
sons, too. First of all, he was impatient to move for­
ward—it had become clear that much was not known
and that in fact they knew very little —neither the
life of proton-radioactive nuclei nor the reactions
that produced them and the mechanisms of these reac­
tions. He wanted to think about new experiments
and discuss them, instead of endlessly chewing over
old ones. And second (or perhaps it was first), he sud­
denly realized that thinking about an experiment and
working it out was incomparably more attractive than
the most brilliant results: ‘When you are carrying out
an experiment you know exactly what you have to
do now and what later, and what will come of it—it
is usually humdrum routine. But when you are mul­
ling things over you can mentally grasp the whole
complex at once—the initial difficulties, and what
won’t fit in later, and the whole fullness of the final
happiness of a new discovery.’
In brief, they began preparing new experiments im­
mediately. It took the designers, mechanics, and elec­
tronics men nearly another six months to alter and
adjust the equipment.
The improved instrument recorded proton decay.
It was also mounted in the vacuum chamber of the
cyclotron shielded by a special screen. The beam of
ions struck the target and induced nuclear reactions
in it. Around ten million nuclear collisions occurred
every second but only ten of them could yield the ne­
cessary isotope. The nuclei synthesized were knocked
out of the target and caught by a rapidly revolving
disk that passed them to the charged-particle spectro-
104
meter, which also determined their decay energy and
what kind of particles they were. But while a partic­
le’s energy was now measured by a semiconductor
detector, its rate of deceleration was recorded in a gas
as usual. The point was that the rate of deceleration
for a given energy is the higher, the greater the mass
of the particle, so that the pulses produced by protons
in a gas counter are weaker than those produced by
alpha particles but stronger than those resulting from
electrons.
The sensitivity of the electronic equipment used
for analysis was raised in order reliably to distinguish
proton emitters on a background of beta and gamma
radiation millions of times stronger.
By 1964 the Dubna physicists had synthesized seve­
ral nuclei—proton emitters with energies between 2
MeV and 5 MeV and half-lives of 0.09, 23.3, and 30
seconds. These proton-emitter isotopes were located
in various parts of the system of elements. The first
two were isotopes of neon and magnesium, and the last
two of tellurium and antimony.
The mechanism of the reactions by which proton-
radioactive nuclei were produced was clarified. It
turned out that there were at least two mechanisms.
When ruthenium, for example, was bombarded with
oxygen ions accelerated to 100 MeV, there was a cer­
tain probability that the two nuclei (ruthenium-96
and oxygen-16) might fuse on collision. The compound
nucleus would cool down like a rapidly rotating heated
drop of liquid, boiling out neutrons and gamma-quan­
ta. The result would be a radioactive nucleus with an
abnormally high neutron deficiency:
ruthenium-96 -f oxygcn-16 -> tellurium-112 -> tellurium-108 -f-
-H/z+y;
(3 v
tellurium-108 -> antimony-108 ->

105
How proton radioactivity can be pictured

The antimony-108 nucleus is 13 neutrons lighter than

the lightest stable isotope of antimony (antimony-12)
and will emit protons.
The same sort of thing happened when an accelera­
ted neon-20 ion hit a nucleus of nickel. They fused,
and the heated compound nucleus cooled down almost
instantaneously, emitting nucleons and yielding light
isotopes lying somewhere between selenium and stron­
tium.
That reaction, however, was not the sole one between
the nuclei of ruthenium and oxygen or neon and ni­
ckel, and more than that, it was the least probable
one.
Apart from reactions in which the two interacting
nuclei fused, there were grazing reactions. Nuclei
transfer groups of nucleons to each other on coming
into contact, and as a result produce proton emitters
with half-lives of 0.8 and 0.09 second. In this case,
when nuclei of neon and nickel, for example, graze,
nucleons are transferred from one to the other produc­
ing an isotope nucleus only slightly different from the
original one (e.g. the neon ion), but deficient in neu­
trons.
106
 This second type of proton decay is sometimes called
delayed proton radioactivity. It is a two-stage pro­
cess. In the first stage, the nucleus supersaturated with
protons undergoes beta decay, emitting a positron and
capturing an electron. One of the protons is thus trans­
formed into a neutron. Part of the decay energy re­
mains in the daughter nucleus and is transferred to the
proton with the weakest binding energy. This proton
is then in such a state that only the Coulomb barrier
retains it in the nucleus. Or again, the proton will pass
quite rapidly through the barrier by the tunneling
effect and escape. The time taken is extremely short,
but considerable on the nuclear scale. A nuclear unit
of time, remember, is the time it takes a particle to
pass through the nucleus (3xl0~22 second), or the
time of one ‘revolution’ of a proton within a nucleus.
(Some physicists figuratively call this interval of time
a ‘nuclear year’.) The first stage (positron decay) oc­
curs much more slowly than the second; therefore we
can observe proton radiation of an intensity that de­
creases with time in accordance with the half-life
characteristic of a beta transition. Heavy nuclei ha­
ve a similar mechanism of decay when emitting ‘long-
range’ alpha particles.
Proton radioactivity was independently discovered
in 1963 at McGill University in Montreal by the Ca­
nadian physicists R .E .B e ll, R. Barton and H. G.
McPherson. They studied the second type of reaction—
the two-stage process: delayed protons with energies
between 2 and 5 MeV emitted by nuclei that are the
reaction products resulting from bombardment of alu­
minium, magnesium, fluorine, sodium, and oxygen
with protons of 97 MeV in the external beam of
McGill’s cyclotron. (It is of interest, incidentally,
that it was there, at McGill University, that Ruther­
ford discovered alpha and beta radioactivity.)
107
 By late 1964 nine proton-emitting isotopes had been
synthesized by the efforts of Soviet, Canadian, and
American physicists. And questions naturally arose.
Is this a common phenomenon? Or is it, perhaps, cha­
racteristic of only a few exotic nuclei? Is there any
sense in studying it extensively? Can it contribute
new information about the atomic nucleus?
The answers were given in the papers of the inter­
national conference on the physics of heavy ions held
in Dubna in 1966.
Existing knowledge of the properties of atomic
nuclei was sufficient to predict the existence of isoto­
pes capable of proton decay. The predictions were not
perfect, of course, and experiments would certainly
make them more accurate, but they reflected the gene­
ral picture of their occurrence.
The sphere of proton decay extends over practically
the whole system of elements and is as common as al­
pha decay, the ‘veteran’ of radioactivity. It is a regu­
lar property of isotopes with an excess of protons.
Proton emission is not, of course, the only way these
nuclei decay, and alpha decay is a close competitor,
but not in the region of nuclei lighter than tin (Z ^50).
Beyond tin, however, the role of alpha decay becomes
more conspicuous, and is particularly active near nuc­
lear shells corresponding to the magic numbers of 50
and 82 for neutrons, and 82 for protons. Alpha decay
then ‘draws even’ with proton decay. In the region
of heavy nuclei it reigns supreme; but there, too, there
is hope of observing proton emission, though it will
require more sophisticated and accurate equipment
than that so far employed.
The properties of nuclei are not the same over the
whole region of proton decay because of the fact that
the degree of proton instability of a nucleus increases
as the number of neutrons gradually decreases. First
108
come isotopes that undergo proton decay only after
a certain amount of ‘heating u p ’. The main role here
is played by the two-stage mechanism, or delayed
proton radioactivity. As we advance further into the
‘realm’ of proton decay proton emission becomes likely
without additional ‘heating’ of the nucleus, which
will happen as we cross the red line corresponding to
zero binding energy.
Greater neutron deficiency still leads to such insta­
bility of proton emission as to preclude any practical
possibility of recording decay, and gives rise to a
‘left’ boundary in the region of proton-radioactive
nuclei.
Strange as it may seem, proton decay differs essen­
tially in isotopes with odd and even numbers of pro­
tons. The difference is linked with the action of the
‘pairing’ forces by which an even proton is more firmly
hound to the nucleus than an odd one. In outlining
the contours of the region of proton decay we have
not, for simplicity’s sake, drawn the line between odd
and even nuclei.
The pairing effect may be the reason for the radioac­
tive decay of even nuclei with emission of two protons
at a time, theoretically predicted by Goldansky. Two-
proton decay does not seem to be as common as single­
proton decay. The region where it occurs is the chain
of even-Z nuclei running along the line of zero proton
binding energy. For nuclei with more than 34 protons,
two-proton decay will be greatly hampered by the
competing process of positron emission.
That is how the first steps were taken into a new
region of nuclei capable of a hitherto unknown mode
of radioactive transformation. Karnaukhov affirms,
with good reason, that practically any nucleus can be
produced, ‘suspect’ as regards radioactive emission of
protons. The most effective and universal ‘tools’ for
109
V. A. Karnaukhov (centre) with colleagues at Dubna

synthesizing them are the nuclear reactions induced by

multiply charged ions. Beams of light, charged partic­
les—protons, deuterons, and alpha particles—can also
be employed. These ‘tools’, however, can only be
effective with elements with a charge less than 30.
‘Just now,’ Karnaukhov said, ‘we are only investi­
gating the phenomenon itself. But I ’m sure that it
will soon become a means for studying nuclei in a
completely unstudied field—nuclei supersaturated with
protons. W e’ve good grounds for hoping that such re­
search will yield new, possibly unexpected informa­
tion. ’
The Canadian group fully shared his opinion. Pro­
fessor Bell told reporters that we could not expect
110
 immediate practical application of proton radioacti­
vity, mainly because the life of proton sources is only
a few seconds long. But it was indispensable for stu­
dying nuclear structure. Its great advantage was that
the proton spectrum consisted of discrete lines, unli­
ke the continuous beta spectrum, which made it very
distinct.
What can we learn from proton radioactivity? Abo­
ve all it enables the contours of the region of proton
activity in nuclei to be accurately determined, and
provides information on the location of the line of
zero binding energy. What we know so far comes from
calculations based on the properties of nuclear inter­
action, as established by study of near-stable isotopes.
Experience will show how far it is applicable to isoto­
pes that are far from stable.
It is very important to measure the intrinsic time
of proton escape from the nucleus experimentally. Si­
multaneous determination of this time and the decay
energy will provide a method for measuring the size of
proton-radioactive nuclei, since the three characteris­
tics of a nucleus (its energy, life, and radius) are in­
ter-related and the relationship has been precisely
calculated theoretically. So far only the sizes of stable
and alpha-radioactive nuclei have been determined.
Proton emitters form a new class of nuclei, whose ra­
dii will be measured experimentally. But the job is
far from simple, for the proton-radioactive nucleus
disintegrates very quickly. But the difference between
even-Z and odd-Z isotopes offers favourable opportu­
nities for experiment. In view of the high ‘proton’
stability of even elements two-stage decay should
be quite common, i.c. the emission of a positron and
the escape of a proton from either the ground or an
excited state. The life of a nucleus undergoing positron
decay cannot be shorter than 0.01 second. That delay
111
in proton decay makes it possible to employ spectrome­
try even though the intrinsic time of proton decay
is extremely short. The time can be determined expe­
rimentally by simultaneous recording of a positron and
a proton. Available electronic equipment enables in­
tervals as short as 10“10 second between pulses to be
measured.
In speaking of determining the radius of a proton-
radioactive nucleus, we imply, of course, that this is
characteristic only of spherical nuclei. But will pro­
ton-radioactive nuclei be spherical? Theory predicts
that the band of proton-radioactive isotopes will cut
across a new region of deformed nuclei, and possibly
more than one. What is important is that detailed
research into proton decay (accurate measurement of
proton energy, study of the angular correlations of
positrons and protons, and investigation of the ensuing
gamma-quanta) will help us get an idea of the shape
of the nucleus and the characteristics of its energy
states. And those examples do not exhaust the attrac­
tions of proton decay for physicists.

ON WHITE DWARFS AND ON EARTH

Let us now look at the right-hand side of our guide

near its right edge. There is another region of unique
nuclei with an excess of the ‘cementing’ stuff—neu­
trons.
Neutron-rich nuclei are by no means a rarity. They
not only undoubtedly exist in nature but apparently
play a role of paramount importance in the evolution
of stars and the development of the natural nuclear-
chemical synthesis of elements.
In current views, stars (which contain the bulk of
the matter in the Universe) are still evolving, that is
112
coming into existence, developing, ageing and dying,
and changing from states of lower density of matter
to ever higher ones. And this may, incidentally, be a
closed, circular cycle.
A newly born, young star or, as astronomers say,
protostar, condenses from rarefied gas and, because
of gravitational pull, begins to emit light. Under the
action of gravity the gas contracts, its pressure increa­
ses, and it gradually begins to heat up. This amazing
process is characteristic of the negative heat capacity
of matter, which is impossible in earthly conditions.
In fact, the more a star shines and radiates energy, the
hotter it becomes. More energy is released by contrac­
tion than is expended in luminescence. The surplus
energy is provided by gravitational forces. In contrac­
ting the star reaches a state in which nuclear forces
come into play. At the very high temperatures and
densities of its basic substance, hydrogen, light ato­
mic nuclei or proton overcome the Coulomb barrier
(repulsion of like charges) and unite, releasing immen­
se energy.
The star becomes a thermonuclear reactor. One sour­
ce of energy—gravitational contraction—gives way
to another, and the star hardly contracts any more.
It becomes mature. The red-hot gaseous ball is in a
state of hydrodynamic equilibrium; the gravitational
forces are counterbalanced by the internal pressure
of the gas. But hydrogen burns changing into helium
and more and more free protons become bound neu­
trons. The star shines brightly. In stars like our Sun
this process goes on for over ten thousand million years.
The Sun itself has lived half that time. For stars bigger
than the Sun, this period is hundreds of times shorter,
so that most gigantic stars may be coming to the end
of their existence.
This period in the life of stars is well known to as-
8 -6 6 3 113
 ironomers and astrophysicists. But what happens
afterward is rather foggy.
The hydrogen in the centre of the star has burned
up. Now helium is burning and the temperature in
the centre is getting higher and higher, and heavier
elements are formed, up to iron. The star, which is
now poor in nuclear fuel, contracts, thus compensa­
ting the radiation from its surface. Because of its
heterogeneous chemical composition, its structure is
reorganized, its envelope begins to expand and its
surface temperature to fall. This is the stage of ‘red
giants’. Finally, there comes a time when everything
burnable has been consumed. The nuclear sources of
energy at the core have been exhausted, and the resul­
ting iron nuclei cannot burn.
This is the most mysterious period in the life of
stars. A catastrophe may occur; the star may explode
at the expense of its residual nuclear fuel and throw
off its outer envelope. Or things may end quietly; the
envelope gradually effuses into space and the stage of
stable equilibrium comes to an end.
Astronomers have observed both processes, but still
do not know why one is preferred to the other. To ob­
tain an answer requires such complicated and labo­
rious calculations that they would take scores of years
even on computers. In the Soviet Union calculation
of their behaviour is under the leadership of Prof.
Alla Masevich.
But everything becomes more complicated still
when the concluding non-equilibrium stage of stellar
catastrophes and disturbances sets in. The finale is
twilight and apparently will not be calculable with
comparative accuracy for many years to come. All
the computers available at present are not enough for
it, although interesting hypotheses and proposals
have been advanced in recent years on the processes
114
occurring at this stage, and have been supported by
astronomical observations. Among those working on
these problems are a group of Soviet physicists headed
by Prof. Jacob Zeldovich, member of the USSR Aca­
demy of Sciences.
If a star does not explode during its evolution it
must remain in the final state. What is that state?
The matter of the star has gradually cooled. Its
internal gas pressure has diminished and gravitation
again become the decisive factor. The force of gravity
contracts it to an incredible density where one cubic
centimetre weighs almost 100 tons. This terrific force
flattens the electron shells of the atoms, and the elec­
trons gain independence. The behaviour of this electron
gas no longer depends on temperature but on quantum
effects. So that, even when completely cooled, the stel­
lar gas possesses elasticity and pressure, which in the
end counterbalances the force of gravity so that the
star stops contracting. A white dwarf develops. Lu­
minous dwarfs, radiating white light, go on cooling for
tens of millions of years. And though they are conside­
red cold (since the energy of quantum motion exceeds
their thermal energy) their surface temperature is as
high as 10 000 degrees. That is the fate that awaits
our Sun.
The stability of nuclei in white dwarfs no longer ob­
serves the limits of our table, compiled for terrestrial
conditions. The boundary of stability shifts toward
an ever greater excess of neutrons. Neutron-rich nuc­
lei, which are beta-radioactive on earth, become stable
in the interior of a star with degenerated electron gas.
Compaction during stellar evolution leads to neutro-
nization, i.e. to the conversion of a higher and higher
proportion of protons into neutrons.
Only stars with approximately the mass of our Sun
can become white dwarfs. If their mass is double that
8* 115
of the Sun, the gravitational forces increase greatly
during cooling, and the star contracts to the density
of an atomic nucleus. One cubic centimetre of their
matter could weigh 100 million tons. The elasticity
of electron gas cannot resist such forces. Only nuclear
particles—protons and neutrons—can counterbalance
them, and prevent unrestrained contraction, by what
is called baryon repulsion, i.e. the elasticity of nuclear
matter. The star will become quite small—about ten
kilometres in diameter. Such stars have been called
‘neutron’ stars since practically all their protons have
been converted into neutrons. They are very hot (their
surface temperature at the moment of formation rea­
ching tens of millions of degrees) but cool very rapid­
ly. They are luminous for only a thousand years, then
their luminosity grows weaker and they become in­
visible.
With neutronization of the nuclei of stellar matter
various neutron-rich nuclei are formed. Their abun­
dance in the star depends on the mean value of the
Nj Z ratio for this state and on the conditions of ther­
modynamic equilibrium. At low temperatures nuclei
with the binding energy maximum for this ratio will
apparently be more abundant. And the last compound
nuclei existing in the concluding stage of the life of
a star, when it is being neutronized, before its tran­
sition to the purely neutron state, will probably be
those with the highest Nj Z ratio in bound states, i.e.
the heaviest isotopes of superheavy elements.
What nuclei could remain in the bound state at the
highest NJZ ratio? On Earth the value of this ratio
for the heavy elements, we know, should not exceed
1.6. But what about stars? What, in general, is the
greatest number of neutrons a proton can hold for the
system to remain bound? These are much the same
eternal questions as with proton excess. And they are
116
just as difficult to answer with adequate certainty.
Journalists love to talk of science conducting a search.
With success? That question at least can be answered
in the affirmative, and we can even furnish evidence.
The search for the location of the stability boundary
of nuclei in the neutron-rich region began some time
ago and has been conducted by many theoreticians.
In 1957 the Canadian physicist, Prof. A .G .W .
Cameron, compiled tables of nuclear masses calculated
from semi-empirical formulas. They have been widely
employed to determine the masses of unknown nuclei,
but apparently do not hold for the region of high neu­
tron excess. Cameron himself, in 1959, analysing the
formation of transuranic elements during nuclear ex­
plosions, suggested that a neutron’s binding energy
falls more slowly with increase in N jZ ratio than shown
in his table. More recently, Cameron and Elkin have
proposed two new versions of the table.
Their new calculations were based on a dependence
between mass and serial numbers such that a neutron’s
binding energy is always positive and there is no sta­
bility boundary. That is at variance with calculations
for a purely neutron gas. The N \Z ratio of neutron
stars can certainly be very high, but they are bound
by gravitational rather than nuclear forces. The ana­
lyses of the energy of purely neutron gas without gra­
vitation, made by theoretical physicists in various
countries, including Zeldovich, E. Salpeter, J.Cam-
mell, P. Sodd, L. Simmons, and others, have indica­
ted that its positive energy decreases monotonally as
its density falls; and it apparently does not acquire the
minimum energy necessary for a drop of liquid to
exist.
At any rate, there must be a stability boundary.
But where?
It was long held that the record for light nuclei
117
(e.g. helium) was four neutrons to two protons. It was
supposed that a helium isotope with an atomic number
of 7, i.e. one consisting of two protons and five neu­
trons, was obviously unstable. In 1960 Zeldovich and
Goldansky, determining the stability boundaries for
light nuclei more accurately by taking into account
the effect of shells and pairing of nucleons, predicted
the existence of several neutron-rich nuclei; in parti­
cular, they concluded that there must be a helium
with a nucleus containing six neutrons (helium-8).
Each proton in the nucleus of this superheavy helium
should be held by three neutrons. Nj Z would be three!
Fantastic as it may seem, experimenters in many
countries immediately began searching for the cham­
pion. In 1961, while irradiating nuclear photographic
emulsion with very fast protons, the Soviet scientists
O.V. Lozhkin and A. A. Rimsky-Korsakov observed
among the typical T-shaped tracks of lithium-8
decay tracks left by nuclei of identical mass but
lower charge. They suggested that these low density
tracks were due to helium-8 and not to lithium-8,
and that at the end of the track, before lithium-8
decayed ejecting two alpha particles, the helium-8
apparently decayed to lithium-8. Unfortunately, their
arguments did not carry sufficient conviction at that
time to be taken as proof of the existence of helium-8.
But as turned out later, they were sound.
In 1965, G. Cherni et al. in America produced he­
lium-8 by bombarding magnesium-26 nuclei with al­
pha particles at an energy of 80 MeV. A magnesium
isotope with atomic number 22 was also produced in
their experiment. The thermal effect of this nuclear
reaction could be judged from the amount of energy
released through decay of its products, and that, in
turn, allowed the mass of the helium-8 to be calculated.
The result obtained proved to agree beautifully with
118
the value predicted by Goldansky some years before.
He8 -►Li8 -* Be8 2He4

A balloon filled with helium-8 would spontaneously

double its volume.
Then the Americans S. Wheatstone and T. Thomas
actually ‘saw’ helium-8. They were studying the light
products of the spontaneous fission of californium-252
by means of a two-dimensional analyser. Each sort of
light nucleus has its own band in the energy spec­
trum. Apart from well known alpha particles, they
registered fission products hitherto unobserved (nuc­
lei of helium-6) and in addition obtained around ten
counts in the band corresponding to helium-8.
Helium-8 decay was also observed by an American
team of physicists led by A. Posckanser. They produ­
ced it by bombarding a target of porous plastic or
cotton wool with fast protons of an energy of 2.2 GeV.
They managed to record the beta particles, gamma-
quanta, and delayed neutrons that are emitted after
beta decay of helium-8. The probability of delayed
neutron emission was estimated at 12 per cent, which
was in full agreement with the observations made by
V. M. Sidorov’s group working at the Laboratory of
Nuclear Problems in Dubna under V. P. Jelepov,
Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Scien­
ces, who had directly registered the birth and decay
of helium-8 nuclei by irradiating of nuclear photogra­
phic emulsion with a flux of negative pi-mesons.
From the size of the mass defect* of helium-8 found,
which was also in fair agreement with Goldansky’s
prediction, it followed that the binding energy of a

* Mass defect is the difference between the mass of the nuc­

leus as a whole and the sum of the masses of all its constituent
particles.

119
neutron pair in the helium-8 nucleus was 2.1 MeV,
and of the four neutrons 3.1 MeV. The binding energy
of a neutron pair in the helium-6 nucleus is 0.96 MeV,
i.e. it is only half as much as in helium-8! If that ten­
dency persists, one may expect the next neutron pair,
completing the p-shell, to have a positive binding ener­
gy as well. Hence, an even heavier isotope may exist,
helium-10, with a magic number of neutrons (eight)
and an Nj Z ratio of four. But the estimates of masses
available do not confirm a bound state for helium-10.
So far the record-holder is helium-8 with an Nj Z of
three. In any case, the nuclei of its multiples, beryl­
lium-16, carbon-24, and oxygen-32, according to
available estimates, are far beyond the stability boun­
dary. The existence of helium-8 is of great interest
for research into astrophysical phenomena. In princi­
ple, a highly neutronized star can contain a great am­
ount of helium-8. But it is highly ‘explosive’ and its
decay is accompanied with a release of energy around
3 MeV per nucleon, which is approximately four times
the energy released through the decay of free neutrons.
So the record-holder among the light nuclei is he­
lium-8. But what about medium nuclei? And heavy
ones? And the heaviest?
To get an approximate answer, it is necessary to
study a vast number of neutron-rich nuclei, to disco­
ver their peculiarities, their preferred reactions, and
their mechanism of decay. Once again, the role of heavy
ions can hardly be overestimated. A great many nuc­
lei with specific properties, namely, with a considerable
excess of protons or neutrons, can be produced in direct,
or as we have called them, grazing reactions between a
nucleus and heavy ions.
The mechanism of direct reactions is being studied
by a big international team at Dubna, headed by
Vadim Volkov. It has included, at various periods,
120
A. G. Artukh, J. Wielczynski, G. F. Gridnev, P. De-
zovsky, G. N. Zorin, T. Kwiecynska, E. Lozinsky,
Jaromir Maly, L. Pomorski, J. Tiss, L. K. Ta­
rasov.
In studying the general picture of direct nuclear reac­
tions with heavy ions, they succeeded in identifying
the most probable types among the vast variety of those
occurring, and their mechanisms and features. It pro­
ved that the number of nucleons transferred from
nucleus to nucleus in reactions between ions and nuclei
can be very, very great. Thus the terbium nucleus,
when bombarded with neon ions, can strip up to ten
nucleons from a bombarding neon nucleus. And when
tantalum was bombarded, reactions were recorded in
which the target nucleus had lost twenty or more
nucleons! Where did the nucleons stripped off disap­
pear to? Were they captured by the bombarding nuc­
leus or did they recoil to exist in a free state?
Their fate was tracked down in special experiments
bombarding a thin tantalum target with neon-20 ions,
in which long-range ions of the isotopes sodium-22,
sodium-24, and magnesium-28 were carefully singled
out, corresponding to the capture of a deuteron (one
proton plus one neutron) and of a group containing
two protons and six neutrons. Comparison of the strip­
ping and capture cross-sections of an identical number
of nucleons revealed that a great many of the ‘deta­
ched ’ nucleons were transferred from nucleus to
nucleus. It is these pick-up reactions that are
used to produce isotopes heavily enriched with
neutrons.
Another feature, no less interesting, came to light.
It turned out that the reaction cross-section during
nucleon transfer was closely dependent on the composi­
tion of the nucleon group transferred. Let us just re­
call that physicists take the value of the reaction cross-
121
section as the formation cross-section of one of the
reaction products, that is as a characteristic of the
probability of some sort of reaction occurring. If we
think of the nucleus as a ball, its radius will be of the
order of 10"12 centimetre, and the cross-section 10"24
square centimetre. When i projectile nucleus strikes
such a small area of the target nucleus a nuclear inter­
action occurs. The probability of its doingso is propor­
tional to the geometric dimensions and energy of
the projectile nucleus. Thus, with tantalum, the pro­
bability of the transfer of two protons and two neu­
trons at once is a hundred I irues greater than the trans­
fer of two protons only, while the probability of three
protons and three neutivns being transferred is ten
times greater than for Ihree protons and one neutron.
A similar dependence has been observed for terbium.
It may be that the transfer of several nucleons is more
likely within a bound group, groups containing rough­
ly the same number of protons and neutrons having
the advantage.
In order to achieve success Wilh reactions yielding
various exotic nuclei, it is necessary to have a clear
idea both of what occurs in the target nucleus and
what happens to the bombarding ion. We now know,
for example, that, when thorium, gold, tantalum, and
other elements are bombarded with ions of nitrogen
or oxygen, not only does the target nucleus pick up
a considerable number of nucleons from the bombard­
ing ion but the latter may break up into lighter frac­
tions owing to the grazing interaction.
Volkov’s group were engaged on rather routine
work. They were not producing new elements or dis­
covering new laws of nature. Journalists did not be­
siege them, and their pictures were only published
in the Laboratory wall-newspaper. But you will often
meet their names in major journals, because, without
122
their humdrum work, it was out of the question to
produce new elements or disclose Nature’s secrets
and the unknown laws prevailing deep in matter.

UNCOMMON PROPERTIES OF COMMON NUCLEI

The telephone rang around two o ’clock in the after­

noon. It was 6 November 1963, the last working day
before the November holidays. Work was finishing
and even in the Novosty News Agency only three
people remain on duty on holidays ‘in case something
happens’. I was already about to go home when the
phone suddenly rang. It was George Flyorov calling
from Dubna:
‘Could you come to Dubna?’
Flyorov wouldn’t be inviting me for nothing. I
knew that quite well. He was more likely to run and
hide to dodge journalists. But we were old friends
and I could count on mutual confidence and understan­
ding.
I caught the 16.00 train and in three hours was in
Dubna. From the station to the laboratory it takes
seven minutes, but if you take a short cut across the
railway tracks and over a pine-covered knoll you can
do it in four.
Work was already finished but they were waiting
for me. Victor Druin was also an old friend. Flyorov
introduced his assistant Sergei Polikanov, and his
young colleague Anatole Pleve, a physicist.
‘Well, w hat’s happened?’
‘They’ll tell you all about i t , ’ Flyorov said, and
left.
Polikanov began talking. He was a short, brown­
haired man with a round face and gentle manner, very
polite and reliable, and very calm. Even too calm,
it seemed to me after I learned what had happened.
123
 A surprise was in store for world nuclear science.
Serendipity had taken a hand again. And where
there is a serendipity surprises are not slow to follow.
No one, of course, would dare to assert that any
unexpected and at first incomprehensible discovery
will necessarily cause a revolution in science when
explained. But every such event undoubtedly calls
for earnest attention. More power to those real resear­
chers and real scientists who know how to stop in
their successful tracks and exclaim: ‘There’s some­
thing queer here,’ and try to find an explanation for
it. Thanks to them seeming obstacles and accidental
results that are passed over by others with equinimity
are suddenly turned into the golden key to long sought
treasures.
In short, the physicists of Polikanov’s team had
been looking for element 102 but had found something
quite, quite different and were able to pull themsel­
ves up and say: ‘There’s something queer here!’
To appreciate the strangeness of what they saw
better, let us turn back a little and remind ourselves
of what we know about nuclear fission.
Induced or artificial fission through the effect of
neutrons used as bombarding projectiles was discov­
ered by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in 1939. One
consequence of their discovery was the atomic bomb,
and another the present rapid development of atomic
power engineering.
What happens to the atomic nucleus during fission?
Niels Bohr and John Wheeler, who suggested the
liquid drop model of the nucleus, believed that it
explained the process well. When a droplet is elong­
ated there is a moment when it takes less energy for
it to break up into two drops than to remain as a sin­
gle drop. But it is still not very clear to physicists
just why the nuclear forces of repulsion and stabili-
124
 o o .

AP £P
Equilibrium forms of a ro­
tating nucleus

zation are altered and redistributed during changes

in the shape of nuclei, as the calculations are extre­
mely complicated.
Theory predicts that the nucleus will divide quite
readily when its shape becomes similar to that of a
dumb-bell. But that shape does not come about by
chance, as can happen during elongation of a drop
of water. The energy introduced into the nucleus by
a bombarding particle may be absorbed in a practic­
ally infinite number of ways, and the additional ener­
gy transformed millions of times from one form to
another before it is converted into energy of fission-
all in as little as 10~14 second!
Calculations based on the liquid drop model suggest
that the two ends of the elongated nucleus should
be equal in size and that the two fission fragments
should consequently be of the same mass. But the
fission of uranium, for example, does not confirm
that: the two fragments are not usually equal, one
may be half as big again as the other.
Recent research has indicated that the reason for
non-conformity with the liquid drop model lies in
the character of the calculations, which assume only
two forms of energy in the nucleus—(a) electrostatic
energy of the repulsion of particles with like charges,
125
and (b) energy of nuclear attraction—and disregard
the surface energy of the nucleus. And that is quite
understandable. At that time nothing was known of
the existence of nucleon orbits or shells, and we
still, incidentally, do not know much about them.
But that is not the only puzzling thing about nuc­
lear fission. Niels Bohr advanced another important
hypothesis suggesting that uranium nuclei might split
spontaneously, without energy being introduced from
the outside or without bombardment by particles.
In certain definite cases it is simply that the tunnel
effect, the ‘panacea’ of quantum mechanics, may de­
velop. In other words, the energy barrier, which is
impenetrable in ordinary conditions, suddenly be­
comes penetrable in terms of quantum mechanics.
The reason is possibly that the internal oscillations
of the nuclear particles eventually deform the nucleus.
For the process of alpha decay (alpha-particle emis­
sion) which has been observed thousands of times,
is quite inexplicable by the laws of classical physics;
only the concept of tunnel effect helped reveal its mech­
anism. The same phenomenon underlay the mechanism
of proton radioactivity. This meant that Bohr’s sug­
gestion was well-grounded, but only experiment could
be the final judge.
In those years almost every nuclear physics labor­
atory in the world was studying uranium fission. In
Leningrad a special department of nuclear physics
under Igor Kurchatov had been set up at the famous
Physico-technical Institute, the first major physics
research centre in the Soviet Union and headed by
a brilliant scientist with a world reputation, Prof.
A. F. Joffe, member of the USSR Academy of Scien­
ces.
In this department, and throughout the whole In­
stitute, such was its style, young graduates worked
126
side by side with eminent established scientists.
A. I. Alikhanov, now a member of the Academy of Sci­
ences, was studying radium and its beta-decay pro­
ducts. The late L. A. Artsimovich, formerly Academic
Secretary of the Department of General Physics and
Astronomy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was
at that time concentrating on the interaction between
neutrons and matter. Two young post-graduate stu­
dents, K.A. Petrzhak and G. N. Flyorov, who had
come to Kurchatov while still students, were occupied
with various aspects of the fission of atomic nuclei.
W ithin a year of Fermi’s work the first radioactive
isotopes of silver (activated by neutron bombardment)
with half-lives of 2.2 minutes and 44 seconds had been
obtained in the Soviet Union.
In 1935 Igor Kurchatov and his brother Boris,
L. V. Mysovsky, and L. I. Rusinov noticed something
strange during the bombardment of bromine; unusual,
time-anomalous disintegrations were registered. Try­
ing to find an explanation for this, Kurchatov sugges­
ted that either bromine had one isotope more than was
known, or one and the same nucleus could reach such
a state of excitation that its radioactive properties
were greatly altered.
The second suggestion proved correct; in fact, arti­
ficially created nuclear isomers were first observed
in bromine nuclei. Research into isomers continued
until 1937, when the first particle accelerator in Euro­
pe, a 60-centimetre cyclotron built on the Kurchatov’s
initiative and under his supervision, began working,
at the Leningrad Radium Institute.
The cyclotron gave a big flux of neutrons for bom­
bardment. It was beyond comparison with the weak
150 keV of the Physico-technical Institute on which
all the experiments had been carried out until then.
Unfortunately, all the counters needed remained at
127
Phystech, so, having bombarded a specimen at
the Radium Institute, they had to run rapidly down­
stairs to a stand-by car and rush to Phystech to count
it.
But every cloud has a silver lining. The technology
of the experiment required a few drops of water to be
added to the bottle of ethyl bromide and well shaken
before counting of disintegrations began. The ride
right across Leningrad from the one institute to the
other was so bumpy that the specimen was beautifully
shaken up.
All attention was focused on studying uranium
fission. The uranium for the experiments was brought
at a photographic supplier’s where it was sold as or­
dinary intensifier.
They knew very little about the fission process,
and even less about chain reactions. And no one then
even guessed that there were neutron moderators,
graphite and water.
The first thing they found was that uranium-235
absorbed resonance neutrons. Then they decided to
check how ordinary metallic uranium would behave,
and to try and test Bohr’s hypothesis of spontaneous
fission. In order to check the counter for the experi­
ment once more, Flyorov got an ampoule of a radio­
active preparation from Artsimovich and took it to
the Laboratory at night when nobody could get in the
way and nothing affect the readings. Just as he was
going to fix the brittle ampoule (its walls were less
than 50 microns thick) into a holder liberally smeared
with warm oil, it slipped and fell to the floor.
‘It crashed to the floor—as it seemed to me then,’
Flyorov still recalls with a shudder. T was afraid to
look. If it was broken, the whole room and all the in­
struments, and not just the instruments, the whole
building as well, would be contaminated with radio-
128
active substances for several weeks, and the experi­
ment postponed indefinitely.
‘Imagine! I opened my eyes and there was my precious
ampoule, all in one piece, stuck in a crack in the floor!
Ugh! I ’ve never been superstitious, but I couldn’t
help thinking that was an omen of good luck. ’
So it was, but that was not the end of the story. They
had built the instrument for observing the sponta­
neous fission of uranium themselves. It was a special
ionization chamber with many plates fastened to rods
(on the principle of a condenser), so that its volume
could be altered.
There were so many plates that the total area of
the chamber was over 1000 square centimetres. All
the plates had to be given a uniform coating of ura­
nium dioxide. Potrzhak, an excellent artist as well
as a physicist, built a contrivance, attaching paint
brushes to a bit and a brace. Flyorov turned the handle
and Petrzhak applied uranium with a brush.
At last the chamber was assembled and ready. Ex­
periments could only be carried out at night because
they wanted to observe the spontaneous fission of ura­
nium without any extraneous effects. So they selected a
time when no other instruments were working and the
trams were not running. The first pulse was registered
at two in the morning, then a second; they looked
at the oscillograph, the curve seemed to indicate the
presence of fragments. They could not help phoning
Kurchatov. He arrived at six. By then the chamber
had registered another four fragments.
Furious activity began.
‘Kurchatov,’ Flyorov relates, ‘made us do dozens
of “pure” experiments and counter-tests to check and
recheck. By day we worked on the cyclotron, and at
night counted fragments. Sometimes with the control
experiments, we had to run with the specimen from
9—663 129
the room where the indicator was to the one with the
control instruments. The corridor of the Institute
passed under a staircase and was L-shaped with a
sharp corner. Kurchatov ordered a padded pole to be
set up at the corner, so we could swing round the turn
by one arm. What do you think? We managed to save
five seconds!’
‘Your chamber’s big, there are many alpha partic­
les, and the possibility of overlapping is not excluded, ’
Kurchatov said.
As a check, radioactive gas was put into the ampo­
ule, and the number of alpha particles increased five­
fold. The effect remained the same; the number of
events was not altered.
‘When the uranium dioxide was being deposited
some rough spots, or “islands”, may have formed.
They would have the effects of charging and discharg­
ing,’ said Kurchatov.
All the plates were coated with very fine gold
leaf, but the effect remained the same.
‘But what is the pulse distribution?’ Kurchatov
asked.
They plotted the curve and found that it was iden­
tical for neutron-induced and spontaneous fission.
‘If i t ’s spontaneous fission, how will other fissile
elements behave?’ There was no stopping Kurchatov.
They tried depositing thorium. No effect was ob­
served.
‘Cosmic rays can induce uranium fission,’ Kur­
chatov declared then. ‘You must exclude the possi­
bility. ’
They built a big new ionization chamber of 6000
square centimetres, and to make sure powered it from
batteries and not from the mains. Flyorov and Petrz-
hak were assisted by a newly arrived graduate,
V. S. Panasyuk—this last experimental test of the
130
presence of spontaneous fission had been the theme
of his finals’ thesis.
The three of them, taking the new chamber with
them, left for Moscow. The deep tunnels of the Metro
would shelter them from cosmic rays.
They spent a whole day running around for the
necessary permission. And only late on a dank No­
vember evening did they go down the escalator of
the Dynamo Station, then the deepest, balancing their
instruments with difficulty. But all the same they
had to wait until midnight when the trains stopped
running (in braking they sparked and could cause
side-effects). For several days they went to the Metro
station as if it was their job (from midnight to six
in the morning). The effect was constant and invari­
able. The uranium disintegrated spontaneously.
Bohr’s hypothesis has been confirmed experiment­
ally by the young Soviet physicists. So, by 1940,
the ABC of radioactivity (alpha, beta, gamma) was
extended by another component, spontaneous fission.
Uranium can split by itself without any outside
effect. But this process is very, very slow. The half-life
of uranium-238 is estimated at 1016 years and its iso­
tope U235 disintegrates ten times as slowly. Obviously
it can have no great interest as regards practical u ti­
lization of the energy released by fission. In atomic
reactors the uranium nucleus splits under the action
of neutrons in 10"14 second.
Some years later, when a capacity for spontaneous
fission was discovered in many heavy elements (tho­
rium-230, thorium-232, uranium-234, neptunium-237,
plutonium-239), interest in it grew and many labora­
tories around the world began a special study of it.
It is now studied by whole groups of scientists and
continues to occupy those at Dubna, too.
It turned out: (a) that spontaneous fission was in-
9* 131
 226 230 234 238 242 246 250 254 258 262 266

H ass number
Dependence of the period of spontaneous fission on the mass
of nuclei

herent in almost all the nuclei of the heavy elements

beginning with thorium, particularly the very heavy,
artificially created ones, and (b) that the probability
of spontaneous fission rose rapidly with increase of
atomic number and began to be a serious rival of omni­
potent alpha decay. For superheavy nuclei sponta­
neous fission becomes the predominant form of radio­
active decay.
132
 Whereas the emission of alpha particles is two mil­
lion times as probable as spontaneous fission in ura­
nium-238, and one million times in plutonium, in
californium it is only thirty times as probable, and
in fermium (element 100) spontaneous fission is the
principal and predominant form of radioactivity.
In studying nuclear fission and calculating its pro­
bability, scientists derived what is called the para­
meter of fission, that is to say the factor determining
the capacity of the nucleus to split. This parameter
is equal to the square of the nuclear charge divided by
its mass number (Z2M), that is to say it expresses the
ratio of the Coulomb energy of electrostatic repulsion
to the restraining surface energy of the nuclear forces.
The greater this factor, the higher is the probability
that the electrostatic forces pushing protons apart
will ‘win’ over the nuclear forces, and that the nuc­
leus will undergo fission. Obviously, the higher Z
is, the greater is this factor, and the more apt nuclei
will be to break up spontaneously, mainly the heaviest
ones in the Periodic System.
If we look at the drawing on page 132 in which the
data on periods of spontaneous fission for the various
isotopes available at the time of writing have been
plotted, we can see that they vary in a very odd way
and differ sharply even for neighbouring elements.
For example, the half-life of californium-254 is 60
days, and of californium-250 15 000 years.
Why? It was incomprehensible. While many of the
mysteries of alpha decay had been unravelled, and
the half-lives and energies of the alpha particles emit­
ted by isotopes had been calculated quite accurately
and could easily be predicted (as we shall see later,
most experiments for creating new, unknown elements
are based on them), there were still no such forecasts
for spontaneous fission.
133
 The model that considered the nucleus as a charged
drop of incompressible liquid brought a certain ad­
vance in our understanding of the process. And it
was from this model that it was deduced that sponta­
neous fission depended in essence on Z2M.
This theoretical proposition was confirmed by the
experimental data. Whereas the period of spontaneous
fission of uranium is around 1016 years, for plutonium
it is 1010 years, for curium 108 years, for californium
it is of the order of one year, and for fermium it is
a matter of a few hours. More detailed research into
the empirical pattern for various isotopes of even
elements, however, indicated that the heavier isoto­
pes of an element (with lower Z2/A) were not as long-
lived as lighter ones. Moreover, the odd isotopes
of the same elements live some 100 000 times lon­
ger than their even-even neighbours. That could
not be explained in terms of the liquid drop
model.
The Swedish theoretical physicist Sven Johansson
suggested explaining it by the ‘collective’ model of
the nucleus. He demonstrated qualitatively that cer­
tain nucleons play a major role in the fission process,
either accelerating it or retarding it. But his attempts
to calculate the absolute life for nuclei as yet unknown
did not yield good results. A period of spontaneous
fission of 0.02 second predicted theoretically for iso­
tope 102256 proved experimentally to be 1500 seconds;
for 104260 theory predicted 5«10'6 second, but expe­
riment gave 0.3 second. Certain other properties of
nuclei had apparently not been taken into account
that should have been in order to derive quantitative
estimates of the life of distant elements.
It is time now to turn back to the story of what hap­
pened in the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at
Dubna.
134
S. M. Polikanov’s group (left to right): V. L. Mikheev, A. F.
Linev, S. M. Polikanov, V. P. Perelygin, A. A. Pleve

It all began back in 1961. Polikanov’s group con­

sisted mainly of young graduates of the Leningrad
Polytechnical Institute, where Flyorov himself had
studied: Victor Druin, a concentrated and purposeful
young man, precise to the point of pedantry, and with
exquisite manners; Anatole Pleve, a romantic and
poet at heart with an exceptionally tenacious grasp
and a gift for finding the simplest solution for the
most complicated problems; Vsevolod Mikheev, of
the clever head and clever hands; Vladimir Perely­
gin, tall and fair-headed, with an open countenance,
famous for his way with glass (about which
later); Nicholas Skobelev, the life and soul of the party;
135
and Vladimir Fomichev. These young men, who sup­
plemented one another beautifully, were making a
series of investigations into the transuranic elements
and were intent on implementing the slogan on the
wall: ‘Element 102 Will Be Ours!’
It is difficult to recall now who was then sitting at
the control panel, who was assembling the probe, and
who was reading the tapes of the recording machine.
The target and its layer of uranium-238 were being
bombarded with accelerated neon-22 ions. The read­
ings were being carefully watched, and everybody was
expecting evidence of the presence of element 102,
but the instruments recorded strong pulses of a strange
character, the energy and form of which resembled
the fission fragments of unknown atomic nuclei.
Could it be the splitting of some as yet undiscover­
ed isotope of element 101 or 102?
That had to be carefully checked. An identical tar­
get of uranium-238 was bombarded in exactly the same
way with a beam of accelerated oxygen-16 ions. Pro­
vided everything was in order, and all the available
knowledge of nuclear fission was correct, the reaction
should he null as regards transmendelevic elements.
Neither element 101, nor 102, could in any way be
formed. The charge of uranium is 92, that of oxygen
is 8, and 92 + 8=100, so that only well-studied iso­
topes of elements with numbers equal to or below
100, i.e. something like fermium or californium, could
be formed. Their alpha decay half-lives are known
to be over 30 seconds, and the period of spontaneous
fission very much longer.
The mysterious pulse ‘popped u p ’ in the checking
reaction as well, literally mocking the experimenters.
Then, after another midnight discussion, Flyorov
again came out with his stock: ‘Couldn’t it be sponta­
neous fission? Think it over, Sergei.’
136
 It is easy to say: think it over. Well, suppose these
really were fragments of spontaneous fission? But
what nuclei? The target was made of uranium, and
that couldn’t have undergone spontaneous fission
during that time, whatever the circumstances (its
half-life being over 1016 years). It was highly improb­
able that the fission had been induced (by a neon ion),
as the life of the parent nucleus of the detected frag­
ments was much longer than 10"14 second, the normal
life of excited fissile nuclei. Dozens of new experi­
ments were needed to clear up the mystery.
And frankly, it was not easy. In fact it was ve y,
very difficult, much more difficult than the job of
a palaeontologist who is trying to re-create a creature
that died many centuries ago from a tiny, unidenti­
fied fragment of bone.
The first thing was to get all the characteristics of
the mysterious fragments correct, i.e. the half-life
of the nucleus emitting them, their energy, the reac­
tion cross-section, and a whole lot besides. It called
for new techniques. Semiconductor instruments
were not then available, so they had to use vacuum
tubes. But the equipment had to be set up in the
cyclotron chamber where the magnetic field was
very intense.
The valves were first arranged along the field’s li­
nes of magnetic force but that did not give the neces­
sary amplification of the signal. When they were
arranged at right angles to the lines of magnetic force
they proved too weak to withstand the power of the
field and the thin glass exploded noisily. In conditi­
ons of high vacuum the sensitive instruments were
put out of action by the strong magnetic and high-
frequency electric fields. The electronics engineers,
A. F. Linev and B.V. Fefilov, never left the cyclo­
tron for days, trying out all the existing valves that
137
The Elephant’ (general view)
 were suitable for mechanical overloads, and succeeded
at last in finding absolutely reliable ones.
As there were no semiconductor detectors, ioniza­
tion chambers were used to detect the reaction pro­
ducts. But ordinary chambers with a single filament
(i.e. an axial electric field) yielded confusing signals,
as the magnetic field prevented trapping of electrons
emerging away from the filament. Remembering his
old trick of ‘harnessing’ the chamber, Flyorov advised
stringing seven filaments and getting a ‘seven-string
guitar’, as the engineers called it. Joking apart, the
seven filaments gave the chamber a uniform field
and caught all the emerging electrons on the dot
without fail.
So much apparatus had to be attached to the probe,
that it was christened ‘the elephant’. Because of the
short life of the isotopes of transuranic elements their
fission fragments could only be registered, of course,
in the immediate vicinity of the cyclotron beam. So
the target to be bombarded was mounted directly in
the ‘elephant’.
The experiment, like most others, was based on the
recoil technique developed at the Kurchatov Institute
in 1952-3 and widely employed in work on heavy ions.
The essence of the method is that target nuclei, having
been given quite a high impulse during their interac­
tion with heavy ions, escape and are caught on a ro­
tating collector (a ring of aluminium foil fixed on a
disk of stainless steel), which withdraws them from
the ‘hot zone’ and conveys them to the detector (two
trap chambers where the reaction products are regis­
tered).
The experiment was as follows. A fine coat of ura­
nium was deposited on aluminium foil and this target
was put into the cyclotron, by means of the probe,
directly in the path of a beam of accelerated ions of
Schematic diagram of the experiment

neon-22. The impact of the ions on the uranium caused

interactions; the resulting products followed the same
path as the bombarding ions (owing to recoil). The
force of the impact was so great that nuclei were
knocked out of the target. Ions passed freely through
the disk but the recoil nuclei were trapped in it.
When, at last, the physicists had made sure that
these really were fission fragments and had measured
the tracks of the particles producing such a strong
pulse (by means of photographic plates), the half-
life of the nucleus proved to be 0.014 second, which
was in utter disagreement with all existing ideas of
the properties of heavy nuclei.
According to all the evidence, only isotopes of ele­
ments with atomic numbers of 100 or less could disin­
tegrate in this way in the experiment. These isotopes
had been quite well studied, and it seemed that it
should be easy to detect the ‘guilty’ one among them.
But at this point they had a surprise. From com­
parisons of the curves and calculations of energies
140
 and cross-sections they found that the periods of spon­
taneous fission of all the isotopes that could he sus­
pected of such decay were at least 1010 times longer
than the ones observed. What did that mean? As the
half-life of the mysterious isotope was so short that
it was impossible to identify it by chemical methods
or mass-spectrometry, they had to resort to cross-
reference reactions to identify it. The ‘masked’ iso­
tope was synthesized in various reactions with heavy
ions and in reactions from bombarding the targets
with alpha particles, deuterons, and even neutrons.
A series of careful experiments that took over two
years provided unambiguous evidence that the bom­
bardment of uranium-238 in turn with ions of neon-22,
neon-20, and oxygen-16, and ultimately with quite
light ions of boron-11 and boron-10, produced a nuc­
leus that split spontaneously into a pair of fragments
with a half-life of 0.014 second once in ten million
interactions. Its fission could occur in one specific
state only and its decay energy was very high.
What was the nucleus that proved capable of such
a sharp increase in its rate of spontaneous decay?
And what were its mass and charge? They had also
to establish whether there were any others capable
of the same effect. Or was it a rare bird that was be­
hind the ‘mask’?
Polikanov’s group made control experiments in
Moscow on the cyclotron of the Kurchatov Institute
and there, too, bombardment of americium-95 and
plutonium-94 with alpha particles, and even deute­
rons, again and again produced nuclei with fission
fragments of similar life (0.014 second).
Analysis of all the data obtained enabled them to
‘unmask’ the mysterious isotope and show that what
had happened was the decay of a nucleus of atomic
number 95 and mass number 242 (that is to say there
141
were grounds for considering that it was americium
in an isomeric state). Let me remind you that isomers
in nuclear physics, unlike chemistry, are nuclei of
one and the same element existing long enough in
different quantum states (with different energies and
radioactive properties) to be observed.
All nuclei with atomic numbers of 95 or higher had
been well studied; their half-lives were known to be
many times longer than a hundredth of a second,
and their periods of spontaneous fission to exceed ten
thousand million (1010) years.
The isotope americium-242, you will recall, had been
synthesized long before, and its properties had been
well studied. In its normal or, as scientists say, gro­
und state, it disintegrates either by beta decay (emit­
ting an electron) or by electron capture, with a half-
life of 16 hours. Spontaneous fission of americium-
242 had never been observed, but according to avail­
able estimates its period of spontaneous fission should
be more than 1014 years.
Thus, the probability that spontaneous fission of
an americium isomer had been detected in the expe­
riments was 1023 times higher than its ground state
(1023 is a number with 23 noughts and you won’t
find a name for it in the dictionary).
Such intensification of the tunneling effect could
only be explained by some special, excited, or ‘me­
tastable’ state of the nucleus. It is special because
an excited nucleus normally tends to get rid of its
excess energy by emitting a gamma-quantum, an elec­
tron, or an alpha particle. In the Dubna experiments
preliminary alpha- or beta-radiation was excluded,
for these modes of decay take hundredths of a second
and then fission requires such a high excitation ener­
gy in the initial nucleus that it would immediately
break up.
142
 The excited nucleus could certainly give off its ex­
cess energy by emitting gamma-quanta. But it ob­
viously preferred to disintegrate without electromagne­
tic radiation. The reason for the preference remained
a puzzle.
As soon as the ‘culprit’ had been identified and it
could be said with complete certainty: ‘We know you,
mask’, experiments were begun to establish its spe­
cific features, under the code name ‘Rare B ird’. It
was of paramount importance to find whether any
other nuclei could also be put into the state of abnor­
mally fast, spontaneously-fissioning isomers, and to de­
termine the boundaries of the phenomenon discovered.
The experiments mainly concentrated attention on
the synthesis of new isomers in reactions with heavy
ions.
Others were brought into the work, the physicists
Lobanov, Oganesian, Vladislav Kuznetsov, Christian
Kekk, and chemists K. A. Gavrilov and Wang Tung-
seng. In fact almost the whole laboratory joined it.
‘All hands on deck’, was the rule there in tough situa­
tions, and always proved justified.
Quite new probes were built to replace the ‘elep­
h ant’; in one of them, built by Druin and Skobelev,
the target was mounted at an angle to the path of the
ion beam so that all the bombarding ions could react
with the largest possible amount of active material.
New materials were developed. And now semicon­
ductor detectors, rather than gas chambers, gave pre­
cise information on the results of the reaction.
In another probe (the creation of Oganesian, Loba­
nov, and Kuznetsov), the fission products were trans­
ported from the target area by a long, continuous metal
belt instead of by a disk. Fast heavy ions flew past
it, but recoil nuclei knocked out of the target adhered
to it. And whereas the two ionization chambers of the
143
 ‘elephant’ ‘picked u p ’ only one period of half-decay
(some nuclei disintegrated while moving from the
first chamber to the second), the belt made it possible
to detect practically all cases and, of course, to mea­
sure their lifetimes. By varying the pace of the belt—
slowing it down or speeding it up—it was possible
to detect the decay of more long-lived or short-lived
nuclei respectively. Organic films and glass were
used instead of photographic plates, and installed
along the whole path of the belt (a scheme developed
by Perclygin and his co-workers). The point is that
fission fragments leave invisible tracks in glass, which
become visible when slightly magnified after etching
with weak hydrofluoric acid. Glass, however, is ab­
solutely insensitive to other radioactive products
(alpha particles, electrons, protons, etc.). Given the
speed of the belt and the length of the glass, it was easy
to calculate the life of the nucleus from the number
of tracks left in the glass.
They looked, on the one hand, for comparatively
long-lived isomers, and on the other hand, for ones
with a life so short that they disintegrated in flight,
almost before leaving the target.
The main experiments were carried out in Dubna.
Another seven isotopes—isomers disintegrating by
greatly eased spontaneous fission—were detected and
positively identified from the shape of their excita­
tion curves.
So it was probably a matter of the existence of a
whole class of hitherto unknown isomers and an enti­
rely new mode of spontaneous fission specific to them;
in principle this was a new phenomenon in nuclear
physics, the synthesis of ideas about spontaneous
fission and isomerism (discovery of which was asso­
ciated with the name of I. V. Kurchatov).
The interest aroused in world science by this new
144
phenomenon intermediate between induced and spon­
taneous fission can hardly be exaggerated. As soon
as the first reports were issued spontaneously fission­
ing isomers became the rage in major research insti­
tutes. I confess that I am very pleased and flattered
that I was lucky enough to write the first articles
on it for popular science journals (all due to that phone
call I mentioned earlier).
To get a better idea of the nature of the isomers
obtained, and the causes and laws governing their
formation in nuclear reactions, it was of interest to
measure the energy and spin of isomeric states.
The Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna
is so called because almost all the socialist countries,
and scientists from many countries in the West, col­
laborate in its work. The co-operation is two-way.
Scientists come to Dubna, do the work they are in­
terested in, using its unique apparatus, and go home
to continue their research. Physicists from Dubna in
turn go to other countries to get acquainted with the
most interesting work there or to share their expe
rience of interesting new research.
So, in order to become familiar with work on spon­
taneously fissile isomers and to continue his research,
Anatole Pleve then went to the Institute of Nuclear
Physics in Bucharest, where he studied various as­
pects of the isomeric ratios for americium with Ro­
manian scientists. Karnaukhov joined Danish scien­
tists in experiments on the electrostatic tandem-ge­
nerator at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.
They measured the reaction threshold of plutonium-
241, in which bombardment by protons forms a spon­
taneously fissile isomer, americium-240. Subsequently
Druin and Polikanov worked in Denmark at various
times.
These experiments, and those at Dubna, revealed
10—663 145
that the excitation energy of the isomers is very high,
up to 3 MeV, and their spin small. All the ‘normal’
isomers hitherto known had considerably lower exci­
tation energies and much larger spins.
At the time of writing about a score of spontaneously
fissile isomers of americium, neptunium, plutonium,
and californium, with half-lives ranging from a
hundred millionth of a second to several minutes,
have been produced and were obtained even from
such a simple reaction as radiative capture of neu­
trons.
The abundant experimental data gave rise to va­
rious theoretical considerations on the reasons for
the formation of this new class of nuclei, and on the
possibilities of its existence.
L. K. Pecker suggested that the americium-242 iso­
mer was a specific hexa-quasi-particle state of the
nucleus, induced by the breaking apart of neutron
and proton pairs, and that its energy would be close
to 2.5 MeV.
The hypothesis advanced by Zeldovich, based on a
superfluid model of the nucleus, was of great interest.
He thought that the nuclear substance, being a super-
fluid liquid, would be in a state where it formed a
drop, that is a nucleus with a quantized axial eddy or
vortex. The spin of these eddy isomers, however,
would have to be quite large.
Many theoretical physicists were inclined to the
opinion that spontaneously fissile isomers were iso­
mers of shape, that is the nuclei were greatly deform­
ed during the reaction. This hypothesis was consider­
ed, in its general form, by Flyorov. It was also ad­
vanced by Malov, Polikanov, and Soloviev who de­
monstrated the possibility of two-quasi-particle iso­
meric states.
The hypothesis that received the widest recognition
146
at the international conference on nuclear structure
in Dubna in July 1968 was the one advanced by
V. M. Strutinsky of Moscow. His calculations indi­
cated that the central fission barrier, regarded for a
quarter of a century as a smooth hump that the nuc­
leus had to be heaved over before it broke up, had a
complex structure and in all probability was not one
hump but two like the back of a Bactrian camel,
with a second potential well between the humps.
The excited nucleus could remain in the second
potential well, between the humps, after deformation,
forming a ‘shape’ isomer. As the second hump is much
lower and thinner than the total barrier, the proba­
bility of a nucleus undergoing spontaneous fission
from this state is greatly increased. Exclusion of gam­
ma emission (which had so far not been observed in
spontaneously fissile isomers) could also be accounted
for by the essential difference between the deforma­
tion of an isomer and that of a nucleus in the ground
state.
From Strutinsky’s standpoint, it would be possible
to explain the resonances, then quite incomprehen­
sible, occurring during plutonium and neptunium
fission induced by neutrons of mean energy, dis­
covered by French and Belgian scientists. These re­
sonances could now be interpreted as a manifestation
of the level of a nucleus in the potential well between
the humps.
Thus, the effect discovered at Dubna stimulated
development of the fission theory underlying the whole
of nuclear power engineering.
There is another hypothesis, linked with the view
of the nucleus as a system of joint interactions, based
on the model of a gaseous ball. D. F. Zaresky and
M. G. Urin have developed ideas on the effect of the
mass coefficient on tunneling effect (the probability
10* 147
of penetration through the fission barrier). They be­
lieve that there can he isomeric states in which pair
correlations between nucleons have completely disap­
peared and the value of mass coefficient corresponds
to the hydrodynamic limit. The probability of spon­
taneous fission should then be 1016 times higher.
It is difficult to say which hypothesis is more valid.
Obviously, as with the model of nuclear structure,
they all contain a certain grain of truth. None of them
denies that the strong exclusion of radiation transi­
tions from a nuclear state with an energy around
3 MeV, and the very small spin, is due to the marked
difference between the shape of the nucleus in its
ground and isomeric states, and that it is this marked
deformation that alters the correlation of forces wi­
thin the nucleus so that it becomes most advanta­
geous to break into two.
What will actually happen, perhaps, will be a re­
conciliation of all the hypotheses advanced when
there is more precise knowledge of the structure of the
nucleus and the nature of nuclear forces. In any case,
explanation of spontaneously fissile isomers will be
a significant step toward developing an exhaustive
theory of the atomic nucleus.

HOW ARE NEW ELEMENTS CREATED?

Let us continue our journey, and go on now to the

top of our map (p. 92) (i.e. to the lower right-hand
corner of Mendeleev’s Table), where the heaviest
transuranic elements are.
Transuranic elements may once have existed on
our planet when it was being formed, but thousands
of millions of years ago they underwent radioactive
decay and can now only be produced artificially. The­
refore, the upper part of our map is man’s undisputed
148
realm, the right to rule which he has won by his po­
werful intellect, dedication, and persistence in achie­
ving his goal.
Since the day the first transuranic element was dis­
covered, or rather created, thirty years have passed;
in that time thirteen new elements have been incor­
porated into Mendeleev’s Table. They are not simply
thirteen new chemical symbols. And least of all is
this synthetically created family like thirteen hand­
some, but useless, trophies crowning heroism and
effort.
From what we have said so far it should be clear that
the very discovery of the heaviest elements in the Uni­
verse has extended man’s knowledge of nature,
of the structure of the atom and nucleus, of the
basic principles of the structure of matter, and of
the fundamental laws governing the world
around us.
But any really profound and fundamental research
often leads to such unexpected and important practi­
cal consequences that it becomes a turning point in
the history of technological progress. So it was with
the transuranic elements. We already know what
plutonium brought mankind. With the building of
fast reactors, i.e. reactors in which fast neutrons ra­
ther than slow ones are used to induce uranium fission,
the plutonium-239 isotope is becoming increasingly im­
portant as a nuclear fuel. It is produced in fast reac­
tors from naturally occurring uranium-238, which is
not fissile in normal conditions.
In ordinary reactors, in which slow neutrons induce
uranium fission, uranium-235 is used as fuel, but there
are only seven kilograms of it in a ton of natural ura­
nium-238. The rest of the U-238 is ‘waste’ and the
technique of separating it is very complicated. It is
this waste that is brought into the fuel cycle by me-
149
ans of plutonium and turned into useful fuel, thus
immeasurably increasing reserves of nuclear fuel.
No less benefit can be derived from plutonium-238.
This isotope has a half-life of 90 years and can be a
compact and quite powerful source of electricity thro­
ugh conversion of the heat of its radioactive decay
in thermo-electric or thermo-ionic devices.
Very light, compact power installations have al­
ready been built in the USA and the USSR, using plu­
tonium-238. Because of their lightness they are indis­
pensable as power sources for spacecraft. And as they
emit very little radiation they are comparatively safe
to handle.
The first plutonium-238 nuclear battery was put
into orbit on 29 July 1961 and is still sending signals
back to earth. A similar source may be taken to the
moon by astronauts to supply power for radio trans­
mitters for a certain time.
Such a power source could be used for pacemakers
for heart patients, and Pu-238 is being tried out with
an artificial heart.
It is estimated that demand for Pu-238 for nuclear
batteries in space will run to tons in the next decade
or two, and if the idea of an artificial heart materia­
lizes, demand will be substantially greater. Luckily,
Pu-238 is not difficult to obtain as it can be produced
in reactors by bombarding neptunium-237 with neu­
trons.
Interesting observations on the practical utilization
of other transuranic elements were made by Glenn
Seaborg on 8 November 1966, when they were dedicat­
ing the Transuranium Research Facilities at the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory.
It was possible, he said, to produce curium-244,
for example, an isotope with a half-life of 20 years,
by intense neutron bombardment of plutonium, and
150
 it, like plutonium-238, could be used as fuel for nuc­
lear batteries. He was specially interested in its large-
scale production because of the tremendous amounts
of transuranic by-products that would inevitably
result. And if it proved to have the properties required
for widespread use as a power source, production by
the ton was feasible by converting plutonium breeder
reactors over to its manufacture.
When he recalled that their first experiments with
curium-244 in 1961 had involved picogram quantities,
(that is quantities of the order of a million-millionths
of a gram), tons seemed almost unimaginable, Seaborg
said, for they were talking of an escalation of produc­
tion of the order of 1018 (a billion billion times).
Isotope power sources created very high temperatu­
res during the conversion of heat into electricity. Three
grams of a mixture of oxides of curium-242 and ame­
ricium-241, for example, gave a temperature of 1000°C,
which provided an inkling of their potential. Other
isotopes, curium-244 for instance, also gave high tem­
peratures. The power output was around 120 watts
per gram of curium-242, around three watts per gram
of curium-244, around half a watt per gram of pluto-
nium-238, and it was available for several years,
diminishing only as the isotope decayed.
Californium-252, which is obtained by successive
capture of neutrons in high flux reactors, could be
used as a point source of neutrons in radiography, or
as a portable and reliable source for neutron activa­
tion analysis (a method of detecting trace amounts
of chemicals by activating them by neutron bombard­
ment) in places where it is not possible to use conven­
tional neutron generators. Californium-252 could also
be used in medicine for treatment, diagnosis, and
other purposes.
However impressive the possibilities of using heavy
151
transuranic elements seemed at that time, Seaborg
continued, he believed that even more significant
fields of application would be found in the future.
And if it was acknowledged that the deepening of
our knowledge of nature alone justified fundamental
research into heavy elements, their potential applica­
tions were an even greater justification. He predicted
that study of transuranic elements would continue
to interest science for many years to come.
There is no need to wonder, then, at the titanic
efforts that have been made and are being made to ad­
vance further beyond uranium.
The discovery of element 101 (mendelevium), which
begins the second hundred on the list of elements
known to man, has become a milestone in the synthesis
of transuranic elements. As we have already learned,
the physical methods previously employed to produce
elements and the chemical means used to identify
them had been exhausted with its synthesis. To make
the next step, quite new equipment and instruments
were needed.
Element 101 was the first transuranic element to
be discovered literally by counting atoms. The ex­
ceptionally small yield of heavy elements is mainly
because of the tiny amounts of starting material used
as targets (when the heaviest element available is
used). Another reason is the small reaction cross-sec­
tion, i.e. the low probability that a fast projectile
particle will hit so minute an area as the target nuc­
leus. But the main difficulty is that even if the pro­
jectile hits the target, it is more likely to split the la t­
ter immediately into two than to be absorbed by the
nucleus with subsequent formation of a new element.
A compound nucleus is more apt to break up, due
to the tremendous excitation induced in it by the
projectile, than to eject neutrons and be transmuted
152
into the nucleus of a new element. You may remember
that the probability of two nuclei fusing is proportio­
nal to their size. The cross-section of a compound nuc­
leus formed through fusion is 10'24 square centimetre,
a figure that is taken as the unit of area for measuring
nuclear cross-sections, and is known as a barn. The
formation cross-section of a new isotope, i.e. the pro­
bability of nuclei ‘surviving’, having got rid of the
excess energy by ejecting neutrons, is many orders
of magnitude lower. When we say that the cross-sec­
tion of a certain reaction is 10'30 square centimetre
we mean that only one compound nucleus in a million
survives having ejected neutrons.
Hence it will be clear how complicated it is to cal­
culate the mass of the interacting nuclei without ne­
glecting any of the factors involved, i.e. to select the
isotopes for the target and projectiles and their ener­
gies, and how difficult it is to obtain a very big yield
of new nuclei.
After the problem of producing an ion flux of suf­
ficient energy and uniformity had been solved, there
was the problem of the target. There can be no doubt
that it too was Problem No. 1. The problem here,
however, was not the complex and bulky facilities
needed to accelerate multiply charged ions but rather
the completely new demands made on applied physics
and chemistry, whose arsenal had been considerably
exhausted.
The literature had no data, save insignificant in­
direct indications, on the interaction of a heavy ion
with a substance. Yet the interaction of multiply
charged ions and the material of a target or collector
plays an essential role in the delicate operations of
establishing the ‘identity’ of the isotope produced.
What is the target for nuclear experiments like?
It is a minute piece of very thin metallic foil, finer
153
than a human hair. An even finer coating of the active
material needed for the reaction of the element is
deposited electrolytically, or by some other means,
on the foil. A target like that is used when the recoil
nuclei from the reaction are trapped by a collector,
that is when nuclei are knocked out of the target.
When the reaction products remain in the target,
it can be a little thicker; it is then dissolved for radio­
chemical analysis (as was done with berkelium and
einsteinium).
Imagine that the target is being bombarded with
accelerated ions. They will hit it and the collector
and, in addition to nuclear interactions, will cause
various changes in their materials connected with
ionization and the changes in their crystal lattices.
Atoms knocked out of the lattices will be in a micro-
molten state and continuous chaotic motion. If there
are any impurities in the target itself, they may, due
to the high chemical activity of ionized atoms, inte­
ract chemically with the material both of the appa­
ratus and of the target to form various, sometimes
very complex, chemical compounds. And being very
active they will have an essential effect on the accura­
cy and reliability of the data on the chemical beha­
viour of an isotope.
When it came to identifying element 102, when
reliable and precise chemical methods had to be aban­
doned, the ‘identity’ of the new element could only
be established by physical techniques, i.e. from its
radioactive decay products, e.g. by the character of
the tracks of alpha particles. The time for identifi­
cation was thus reduced from ten minutes or so to
a few seconds. And, having only the tracks of alpha
particles to go on, they had to be very, very appre­
hensive lest side processes in the target and collector
gave rise to alpha particles of the same energy but
154
having not the slightest connection with transuranic
elements. They might arise, for example, from thori­
um (Z = 90) produced by nitrogen bombardment (Z = 7)
of a target containing even the tiniest amount of bis­
muth (Z = 83).
From that angle a whole group of elements (lead,
bismuth, and thallium) is, in general, extremely dan­
gerous; for when bombarded they emit high-energy
alpha particles (up to 12 MeV). The probability of
these background alpha-particles arising is very high;
the formation cross-section of element 102 from the
interaction of oxygen and plutonium is of the order
of 10"32 square centimetre, and the formation cross-
section of alpha activity in the case of an oxygen-lead
interaction 10“26. To be really certain, therefore, that
the observed effect was attributable to element 102,
and only to it, they had to be, not 100 per cent sure,
but 100 000 per cent certain that there was less than
one hundred thousandth of one per cent of lead, bis­
muth, thallium, or any other element as an admixture
in the target material.
With techniques sensitive enough to detect new
elements with a cross-section of 10"34 square centi­
metre, concentrations of elements of one ten m illi­
onth of one per cent are dangerous!
A layer of graphite can form on the target under the
action of a dense ion beam, a possible reason being
the burning of oil vapour from the cyclotron. Under
bombardment the precipitated oil disintegrates but
the graphite remains, and then not an atom can be
pulled off the target.
How was this annoying phenomenon to be avoided?
First of all, it was necessary to raise standards of
target purity to eight, or even nine, nines after the
decimal point. Conventional methods were of no use
for such purity. The only way out was to produce a
155
substance of uniform isotope composition by com­
plex modern techniques for the separation of isoto­
pes. The purity of the neon-20, and neon-22, and
oxygen isotopes supplied to Dubna is now almost abso­
lute (99.99999999 per cent).
Before an experiment the target backing can first
be heated in a vacuum so that impurities are volati­
lized. That is what Ghiorso’s physicists did at Ber­
keley when preparing to synthesize element 103. They
used a target of californium deposited on thin nickel
foil. The foil was first heated to 1000°G in a vacuum.
Then californium obtained by electrolysis was electro-
deposited on it, and the whole thing heated once more
to 1000°G for some minutes by electron bombard­
ment. In this intricate way the californium was con­
verted into a very stable and dense coating on the
nickel foil and admixtures of lead and bismuth were
completely evaporated.
In addition to these methods, there is another,
purely experimental, way out, and that is to check
the results obtained many times. And "background
experiments’ can be performed, in the same condi­
tions, using a substance known not to produce the
element wanted. Remember the experiment in bom­
barding uranium with oxygen, when spontaneously
fissile isomers were discovered?
When one is trying to produce a new element, it
is necessary so to vary the conditions of the experi­
ment that no doubts remain about the stability of
the effect. It is important, as well, to select the target
and projectile materials not only from the aspect of
optimum calculation of the nuclear interaction but
also taking into account the possible effect of impu­
rities and the target material. For example, when
element 102 was being produced three combinations
could have been employed: (a) plutonium plus oxy-
156
gen, (b) californium plus beryllium, or (c) uranium
plus neon, i.e. either a light target and a heavy ion
or a heavy target and a light ion. From the standpoint
of physics it was rather better to take a heavier tar­
get, though the yield would then be small; but from
the angle of radiochemical effects and convenience
light targets were preferable, being less radioactive.
The importance of these rather dull arguments and
explanations will become clear when we learn about
the adventures, or rather misadventures, of element
102. Though it had no name but only a number, it
managed to have a chequered career packed with dra­
matic events.
July 1957 was unusually hot both in Europe and in
America. Everyone who failed to ‘get back to nature’
from torrid humid New York tried to relax as late as
possible in the evening when there was an illusion
that it was cooler. That was why it was quite lively
at the building of the New York Times, despite the
late hour, when the news flashed: ‘Element 102 dis­
covered. Named nobelium.’
Day was already dawning in London and Stock­
holm. The newspapers there were already announcing
the same thing: ‘Element 102 discovered.’
It was a fine morning in Moscow, too. Vyacheslav
Shchegolev, a thin, fair-haired young man quite un­
known in either Europe or America, was in a local
train going from Moscow to Dubna, where he had been
invited to work in Flyorov’s laboratory. He was
mulling over various thoughts and worries; he was
starting out on life; everything lay before him; in
his pocket was a scarcely dry diploma from the Le­
ningrad Polytechnical Institute confirming that he
had qualified in a very romantic and fascinating pro­
fession, physics. He was going to an institute where
the best brains of several countries had been brought
157
together, and he was moving to a brand new town
where he would live for years, and to a different world
from his native Leningrad. There was no room left
for element 102 in these streams of thoughts. And
no one in the world would have thought then of link­
ing these events.
That memorable summer of 1957 an international
team of scientists from the Argonne National Labo­
ratory in Chicago, the Atomic Energy Research Es­
tablishment in Harwell and the Nobel Institute for
Physics in Stockholm were trying to synthesize ele­
ment 102, targets of a mixture of curium isotopes
were being bombarded in a cyclotron with a small
beam of carbon-13 ions of quite varied ‘colour’.
They were using the ‘recoil technique’ to separate
any possible nuclei of element 102 from the thin cu­
rium targets. The products formed in the nuclear
reactions resulting from bombardment were knocked
out of the target by the bombarding ions and picked
up on catchers and then treated chemically and ana­
lysed in ionization chambers with a view to detecting
alpha activity from the disintegration of element
102.
In extremely difficult experimental conditions in­
volving many runs, the Stockholm group succeeded in
detecting some 20 alpha particles of 8.5 MeV and a
half-life around ten minutes in the ionization chamber.
Activity in the ion exchange column was as had been
expected; two or three drops were eluted from the
column immediately after passage of a full volume
of eluant, i.e. more quickly than the lighter actinides.
This suggested that the 20 atoms recorded could only
be element 102, and probably, its odd isotope 253
or 251. It must be odd because the astonishing, quite
incredible ‘longevity’ of the alpha activity obtained
was otherwise inexplicable. And only isotopes of odd
158
mass number gave such a delay in alpha decay.
They had estimated that the normal ‘permitted’
decay for an isotope of element 102 with alpha
particles of a similar energy (8.5 MeV) would be only
ten seconds.
The international team reported positive identi­
fication of element 102 and suggested calling it ‘no-
belium’ in honour of Alfred Nobel, whose name was
borne by the Stockholm Institute where the work
was done, and the influence of which on the advance­
ment of world science could hardly be exaggerated.
The name was accepted almost immediately by the
Commission on Atomic Weights of the International
Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
The Stockholm team did not repeat their experi­
ment, but efforts were made to reproduce it at the Ra­
diation Laboratory in Berkeley and at the Institute
of Atomic Energy in Moscow. All their attempts to
get ten minute alpha activity with the same techni­
ques and in the same conditions, however, proved in
vain.
In Berkeley the powerful HILAC accelerator (also
called the ‘atom-making machine’) was replacing that
honourable ‘veteran’, California University’s 60-inch
cyclotron, for accelerating heavy nuclei (ions), and
had only just begun operation.
Whereas the strength of the cyclotron beam at the
Nobel Institute was between 0.03 and 0.1 microam­
pere, HILAC’s was 0.2 jiA; and whereas the beam
of the Swedish machine was ‘spread’ over a range of
energies from 70 to 100 MeV, HILAC produced a
monochromatic (homogeneous) one.
The American physicists bombarded curium targets
with the carbon-13 and carbon-12 ions in a range of
60 to 100 MeV and began the analysis within eight mi­
nutes of each bombardment. In the other experiments
159
The HI LAG (Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator)
the energy range had been 5 to 9 MeV per nucleon
and analyses made every 30 seconds.
In these conditions at least 100 atoms of the new
element should have been produced, but in not a
single case over several months did they obtain energies
of 8.5 MeV for alpha-particle activity and a half-life
of ten minutes. That was because there was still trea­
cherous guile in targets not sufficiently refined of
slight admixtures of lead, mercury, and other ele­
ments!
In the work carried out in Moscow in 1957-8 on the
150-centimetre cyclotron at the Institute of Atomic
Energy a new technique for physical identification
of the element was employed for the first time, which
consisted essentially in rapid mechanical transfer of
the nuclei or reaction products escaping from the tar­
get to radiation detectors recording alpha particles
or fission fragments. (A quite advanced technique we
became acquainted with in Dubna where it was used
in experiments to detect proton radioactivity and
spontaneously fissile isomers. Remember the rotating
disks and endless metal conveyor belt for withdrawing
recoil nuclei?)
In the early Moscow experiments nuclei were kno­
cked out onto an aluminium catcher that was shuttled
back and forth every 1.5 to 2.0 seconds across the two
meters from the bombardment zone to the nuclear pho­
tographic emulsions that served as alpha-particle de­
tectors. Target of plutonium-241 and plutonium-239
were bombarded with accelerated oxygen-16 ions. The
first target was subjected to 40 bombardments of three
hours’ each. Exposure time in the beam and at the
photographic plate was eight seconds; the catcher
cycle took three seconds. As a result 90 alpha particles
were detected with energies between 8.2 and 9.0 MeV.
The second target, of refined plutonium, contained
11-663 161
a much smaller admixture of lead. Ten three-hour
bombardments in similar conditions resulted in the
detection of 20 alpha particles with energies between
8.2 and 9.0 MeV.
Every measurements with photographic emulsion,
however, are not sufficiently accurate, so the results
were then processed to make them more precise. When
corrections were applied, the high-energy alpha par­
ticles detected (which could be attributed to decay
of element-102), gave a half-life for this isotope of not
less than two seconds and not more than forty. The
Moscow workers did not succeed in making a detailed
study of the reaction leading to the formation of the
new emitter, but it could be supposed that it was pro­
duced in two types of decay involving the emission
of either four or five neutrons.
Anticipating things a little, let us remark that the
very much more exact experiments performed later
revealed that these properties closely resembled those
of isotope 102252, which has half-life of 4.5 seconds
and alpha-particle energy of 8.41 MeV. It was this
isotope, apparently, that Flyorov’s group had suc­
ceeded in detecting in the following nuclear reaction:
plutonium2^ + oxygen1^ 5 neutrons -►102 252

The main contribution of the Moscow team (which

they owed to the endless checks and disproofs introdu­
ced by Kurchatov) was their exposure of the ‘treachery’
of targets. That was how they detected an enormous
rise in alpha-active background, due to the effect of
ion bombardment on the admixtures of lead and ligh­
ter elements in the materials of the target and catcher.
The cross-section of this background alpha-radiation
was a million times higher than the formation cross-
section of element 102. Thus groups of alpha particles
162
with energies of 11.65 and 8.87 MeV were detected for
the first time in Moscow. It proved later that they
were caused by the decay of polonium isomers result­
ing from the interactions of oxygen and lead in various
transfer reactions.
The Moscow team spared no efforts, paid special at­
tention to the ‘background problem’ and succeeded in
developing a highly sensitive activation method
of analysing the targets and catchers for lead content
and an efficient technique for refining the target
material of the impurities always in it; and all that
later stood in good stead for many experiments at
Dubna.
The elucidation of all these circumstances enabled
Seaborg, Ghiorso, and others to suggest that the alpha
activity observed in Stockholm might have been caused
by the decay of lighter elements like lead, bismuth,
etc., that had not been refined from the material used
and mistakenly attributed to element 102.
Less than a year had passed since the announcement
of the discovery of nobelium, and all that remained of
its name, as journalists bitingly commented, was
the ‘No’.
In April 1958 a team at the Radiation Laboratory
in Berkeley, consisting of Seaborg, Ghiorso, Thorb-
jorn Sikkeland, and J. R. Walton, mounted a new ex­
periment to synthesize No. 102. To improve the accu­
racy of identification they employed an original,
‘double recoil ’ technique specially developed by Ghior­
so for the purpose.
The experiment was planned and carried out as fol­
lows. Fine nickel foil was carefully coated with a
mixture of curium isotopes (95 per cent curium-244 and
4.5 per cent curium-246), which used up the whole
stock they had built up over several years by bom­
barding plutonium with neutrons.
u* 163
 The target was put into a container filled with
helium and placed in the accelerator’s beam. The pro­
jectiles were carbon-12 ions accelerated to high energy.
To produce a nucleus with 102 protons, six protons
from the carbon nucleus had to combine in the reac­
tion with the 96 protons of the curium nucleus:
curium2^ + carbon *{? ->element 102 264 -|- 4 neutrons

Half the 102254 nuclei decayed in about three seconds

to fermium-250 nuclei with one alpha particle to each
decay event.
The radioactive properties of fermium-250 are well-
known: its half-life is 30 minutes with the emission of
alpha particles with an energy of 7.43 MeV. Thus, it
can be identified chemically in an ion-exchange column
by a technique which is also well known.
So element 102 should be identifiable from its daugh­
ter products, which could be isolated by physical and
chemical means.
When HILAC’s beam of carbon nuclei hit the thin
target, the atoms of element 102 born were ejected into
an atmosphere of helium. At that point they did not
possess a complete set of electrons and were essentially
positive ions, and for that reason were beautifully
attracted by the negatively charged metal conveyor
belt positioned directly beneath the target.
The belt, travelling at a certain speed, then passed
under a trap or ‘catcher’ made of metal foil, which in
turn was charged negatively in respect to the belt.
Half the daughter atoms of fermium, produced as a
result of alpha decay of element 102, escaped from the
surface of the belt and were drawn to the catcher.
The period of bombardment corresponded to the
half-life of the ‘daughters’, i.e. the fermium atoms
destined for investigation. After bombardment, the
164
 foil of the catcher, with the daughter nuclei adhering
to it, was cut into five equal sections, transversely to
the direction of the b elt’s movement. The sections
were then analysed simultaneously in radiation coun­
ters. The position of the stationary catcher for fermi-
um-250 atoms proved to correspond to the three-se­
cond half-life of the parent isotope, i.e. to the isotope
of element 102.
To isolate the daughter decay product, fermium-
250, chemically the radioactive materials of the cat­
cher were dissolved and put into an ion-exchange co­
lumn. A tiny droplet of liquid containing fermium-
250 yielded nine decay events, which meant that it
contained nine atoms of fermium.
In the next, more direct experiments, the charged
ions of element-102 ejected from the curium target
were trapped on a negatively charged belt coated on
both sides with aluminium, which was drawn rapidly
into the alpha-particle counter of an ionization cham­
ber with a grid for direct measurement of the element’s
half-life and the energy of its alpha particles. While
one section of the belt was being analysed, another was
being bombarded, and so on.
The half-life was found to be three seconds and the
energy of the alpha particles 8.3 MeV. To their great
surprise they also noticed fission fragments with the
same half-life of three seconds, the result of sponta­
neously disintegrating atoms and constituting around
30 per cent of the number of alpha decay particles.
The American scientists interpreted the results of
the first and second experiments as the discovery of
the isotope of 102254.
Unfortunately, their interesting work was abruptly
halted by an accident, the curium explosion we have
already mentioned. The helium-cooled window be­
tween the curium target, and the HILAC tube blew
165
up because of a chance increase in pressure, and the
helium destroyed the curium target. The accident not
only wiped out their whole stock of precious curium
but was also a psychological shock. Those involved
admitted that they became extremely gun-shy when
using highly alpha-active targets. It was only some
years later that they decided to repeat the experiments,
after taking the most elaborate precautions.
Since the Swedish results had proved erroneous, the
Berkeley team thought it their right to suggest a new
name for element 102 and, officially or otherwise, ex­
pressed a wish to christen it rutherfordium in honour
of Ernest Rutherford, the pioneer of nuclear phy­
sics.
Having abandoned all manipulations with highly
active targets because of curium contamination, the
Berkeley physicists concentrated on ‘quieter’ pluto­
nium ones. But HILAG was not suitable for producing
ions of elements heavier than oxygen.
To obtain element 102, such a combination of small
cross-sections and weak beams was almost ineffectual.
So Ghiorso’s group decided to go for No. 103 instead
by bombarding small amounts of californium with
boron ions.
In the spring of 1961, after nearly three years’ per­
sistent work Ghiorso, Sikkeland, A. E. Larsli, and
R. M. Latimer detected an isotope of element 103 with
a half-life around eight seconds in the following reac­
tions:
californium 2| | + boron -* 103 257 + 5 neutrons;
californium 2jjg + boron ^ -* 103 257 + 6 neutrons

The scheme and technique of the experiment were al­

most the same as those employed in the second, direct
experiments to synthesize element 102254.
166
 Boron ions bombarded the californium target, ge­
nerating positive ions of element 103, which were
caught on a moving, negatively charged, copper belt.
Alpha-particle counters (silicon-gold detectors) mea­
sured the decay rate of the isotope and the energy of
the alpha particles emitted by it in decaying to men-
delevium:
h a lf-life 8 sec
103257 ------------- ►mendelevium jqj + helium |

In this way it proved possible to identify an isotope

of element-103 emitting alpha particles with an energy
of 8.6 MeV, and a half-life of eight seconds. Many con­
trol experiments using various targets and bombard­
ing particles were performed so as to demonstrate that
the activity was irrefutably not due to lead, bismuth,
or polonium, since the properties of their radioactive
isotopes were close to those of the isotope of element
103. As with No. 102, it was impossible to identify
No. 103 chemically. Its discovery was based solely
on physical evidence.
The scientists who created the new element proposed
calling it lawrenciuin in honour and recognition of
Ernest 0. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and
founder and director of the Radiation Laboratory at
Berkeley.
* * *

The Learned Council of the Joint Institute of Nuclear

Research in Dubna meets twice a year, usually at the
beginning of January and end of May. The most emi­
nent scientists of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Ger­
man Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Roma­
nia, the Soviet Union, and other member countries
attend. Around the horseshoe table in the conference
hall can be seen venerable members of academies and
167
professors, the flower of science, listening attentively
to young scientists and heads of laboratories reporting
on the most interesting work done in the past half-
year. Then they discuss plans and schemes for the next
half-year. Before each one on the table is the flag
of his country. The solemnity of the occasion is slight­
ly marred by the school blackboard in the middle
of the hall and, in May, by the common wild flowers
in vases on the table.
During the evening session on Friday, 31 May 1963,
the attention of all members of the Learned Council
concentrated on Eugene Donets, a tall, handsome
young man in a light open-necked shirt, who led a
team consisting of himself, Shchegolev, and Victor
Ermakov. Donets was reporting discovery of a very
heavy isotope of element 102, with a mass number
of 256.
‘Let me tell you how the heavy isotope 102256 was
synthesized. It is clear now that it can be obtained by
the following reaction:
uranium2^ + neon 22 -v 102260 -v 102258 -f- A n.
The compound nucleus can eject four neutrons and
will be transmuted into an isotope 102256. This nucleus
will be in a non-excited stale in the ordinary sense,
and its radioactive properties can be studied in that
state.
‘We can now say that it did not take very great in­
genuity to produce this nucleus. It was much more
difficult to investigate its radioactive properties and
to find how many nuclei were produced in any one
experiment.
‘In reactions with heavy ions the number of products
obtained resembling the nuclei of new elements in
radioactive properties is much greater (hundreds and
thousands of times more) than the number of nuclei
168
Eugene Donets’ Dubna group: (left to right) Donets, Victor
Ermakov, and Vyacheslav Shchegolev

of the elements being sought. And these products may

contain nuclei whose radioactive properties are very
close to those expected for elements 110 or 115, to say
nothing of 102.
‘In spite of all these difficulties, it is at least pos­
sible to sythesize nuclei of a new element, study their
properties, and clarify how they are produced in a
particular nuclear reaction.
‘The alpha decay is the transformation of a nucleus
of element 102256 into two nuclei—one of helium with
a charge of two and mass of four and one of element
100, fermium, with a charge of 100 and a mass of 252.
If we detect alpha particles with an energy correspond-
169
ing to that of isotope 102256, that does not yet mean
that we have synthesized that isotope. But if with
alpha decay, element 100 is also obtained with a mass
number of 252, that means that alpha decay of isotope
102256 has occurred.
‘It is that principle for recording an alpha-active
nucleus by its daughter product, which was suggested
by Ghiorso, that underlies the technique we used.
It is based on the law of conservation of momentum
and is quite feasible to implement.
‘If alpha particles are ejected when quiescent nuclei
of element 102256 decay, the 100252 nucleus receives
a recoil energy of approximately 100 keV, which is
sufficient for it to pass through five to seven atomic
layers of any substance. It is a very high energy and
we can make use of it.
‘From what I have said, the operating principle of
the apparatus we used to synthesize isotope 102256
can be understood. It consists of a gas-filled probe
located in a vacuum chamber in the beam of a big
cyclotron. A beam of accelerated neon-22 ions strikes
the probe through a special vacuum-tight window.
‘As the beam is quite powerful, lighter targets could
be used. We bombarded a uranium target. On striking
a uranium nucleus, an ion usually splits it into two
nuclei of equal mass. But there are exceptions. Once
in a 100 million cases the compound nuclei does not
split, but successively emits four neutrons to become
a nucleus of element 102.
‘Behind the uranium target there is a closed space
with a moving wall (formed by the conveyor belt).
The other walls are stationary. Under the impetus of
the bombarding neon nuclei, the nuclei of element
102256 are knocked out of the thin layer of uranium
into the gas, where they are slowed down through col­
lision with its molecules and dispersed to the walls
170
of the probe. They are then withdrawn from the bom­
bardment zone by the belt. If alpha decay of clement
102 has occurred, nuclei of element 100 will be attrac­
ted to a special catcher by the electric field.
‘Since the half-life of element 100 is known, this
experiment can be carried on for a long time until
enough of its nuclei have been accumulated to permit
determination of the half-life of element 102 from the­
ir distribution and the pace of the belt.
‘These experiments have been carried out with suc­
cess. It has been established that the isotope 1O2260
is alpha active and has a half-life of several seconds.
‘The number of nuclei of element 102 produced dur­
ing a definite period of bombardment depends on the
energy of the bombarding neon ions.
‘It is easy to understand why. When the energy of
the neon ions imparts excitation to the compound
nucleus, the latter is not excited enough to emit four
neutrons if the energy is low; on the other hand, if
it is very high, four neutrons cannot cool it down,
a nucleus of element 102 can only be produced in the
non-excited state within a very narrow band of ener­
gies.
‘The experiments were continued. We studied the in­
stability of 102256 isotopes in regard to spontaneous
fission into two fragments. This nucleus proved to be
quite stable as regards spontaneous fission. Its half-
life is around 1500 seconds.
‘All the experiments were performed most scrupu­
lously and all results that might contradict the final
positive conclusion were repeatedly verified by various
cross-checks.
‘It was not only that we were dealing with a new nu­
cleus but that its properties, as predicted by theory
differed greatly (to be exact 100 000 times) from those
we obtained experimentally.
171
 ‘The period of spontaneous fission predicted theore­
tically by Sven Johansson was around 0.01 second,
but the experimental period determined by us was
over 1000 seconds.
T think that is a sufficient illustration of how ca­
reful one must be in predicting nuclear properties.1
Donets did not say in his report that the more than
700 decay events of the new isotope registered by
them were many times more than the results of any
of the experiments performed earlier. Nor did he say
that Flyorov had insisted on them attempting to
refute their own results and performing hundreds of
experiments, and that, with no time to savour success,
they had thrown doubt on each finding, proving time
and again, that there could be no mistake. And no one
drew attention to the fact that they had worked day
and night, forgetting all about time.
The objective data obtained by the Donets group
were so irreproachable that D. I. Blokhintsev, Corres­
ponding-Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences,
then director of the Joint Institute, usually carping
when discussing the results of experiments, declared:
‘This is perhaps the first work in which it is impos­
sible to point out a fault of any kind.’
The next week the news was published. ‘Element
102 produced at Dubna’, the Moscow papers said.
And pictures of the three young fellows from Dubna
appeared in papers and magazines.
They were pestered with questions:
‘What is the new element like? What colour is it,
white, dark, or silvery?’ journalists asked them.
‘It is like a feather of the Firebird’, Donets joked.
‘If a piece were ever obtained it would explode immedi­
ately with dazzling brilliance. Its period of decay is
only eight seconds. In three winks half of it is gone.’
Flyorov ‘escaped’, as usual, to the Pamirs. Shche-
172
golev, abandoning all hope of beating the reporters
off, put all his notes at their disposal. There was quite
a commotion.
But that was only the beginning.
As Donets had said in his paper, the Dubna results
were very different both fiom the theoretical calcula­
tions and from the results obtained at Berkeley in 1958.
Since the isotope 102254 obtained in Berkeley
decayed for three seconds emitting alpha particles,
and spontaneously disintegrated after six seconds,
spontaneous fission of isotope 102256 should according­
ly occur in approximately 0.02 second, and ele­
ment 104 would only live five millionths of a second.
That is to say, their synthesis would simply have to
be abandoned as it bordered on the impossible.
But the unimpeachable experimental data of Shche­
golev and Donets differed from the theoretical estima­
tes by a factor of 400 for alpha decay, and of 100 000
for spontaneous fission.
Something was rotten in the state of Denmark!
Then Flyorov, having consulted his loyal cohort,
posed a herculian labour. He suggested rechecking all
tbe known facts about element 102 and to check them
with new, improved techniques and precision instru­
ments. Great strides had been made in experimental
techniques in those years, and the Dubna workers had
experience of accurate and rapid identification of ele­
ments by physical methods, and had verified data at
their disposal on the laws governing production of
Uansuranic elements in various nuclear reactions.To
put it simply, Flyorov decided to employ all the most
up-to-date knowledge and instruments to obtain every
possible isotope of element 102 in carefully controlled
experiments.
The time-honoured command went out: ‘All hands
ou deck!’ Almost all the laboratory’s staff were invol-
173
ved in the work: Shchegolev, Donets, and Ermakov,
of course, and others we also know—Druin, Skobelev,
Fefilov, Mikheev, and Lobanov.
To begin with the properties of isotopes 102264 and
102256 were verified. The methods of identification
were all those we know, i.e. by their ‘daughters’ and
by the direct characteristics of the alpha particles.
The results of the two experiments proved quite unex­
pected, though they were in full agreement.
Isotope 102256 behaved exactly as it had in earlier
experiments; isotope 102254, thought to have been pro­
duced at Berkeley, would not match up with its iden­
tifying marks. Its half-life proved to be about 60 se­
conds rather than three, as thought in 1959, and its
alpha-decay energy 8.1 MeV instead of 8.3 MeV.
Spontaneous fission occurred in less than 0.01 per cent
of cases, rather than in 30 per cent.
In general, they experimented at Dubna for three
and a half years to investigate the properties of six
isotopes of element 102 with mass numbers of 251,
252, 253, 254, 255, and 256. The absolutely reliable
information on their properties obtained often diffe­
red from that previously established by the American
physicists.
At the same time Shchegolev, Donets, and Ermakov
synthesized a new isotope of element 103, or lawren-
cium, employing the same technique as the Americans,
and continued the investigation of its properties,
which the people at Berkeley had not completed. By
bombarding a target of americium-243 with accele­
rated oxygen-18 ions they produced the isotope lawren-
cium-256, with emission of five neutrons. Its half-
life of the isotope was 45 seconds and its maximum
formation cross-section 6 x l0 " 32 square centimetre.
Carefully verified data gave its dominant mode of

174
radioactive decay as alpha decay, with electron cap­
ture in a very small fraction of cases.
In the autumn of 1966, to clear up the misunderstand­
ing, Ghiorso and his group—Sikkeland, Matti G. Nur-
mia, and others—in the heavy ion laboratory of the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of
California, in Berkeley, in turn checked the data on
102 isotopes in a series of very precise experiments
differing somewhat from Dubna’s. They bombarded
curium targets with accelerated carbon ions in an im­
proved HI LAC with more intense ion beams, and pro­
duced and identified all of them with masses from
251 to 257 inclusive. According to Ghiorso their
results agreed with those obtained at Dubna" within
the acceptable limits of statistical error. This double
check also provided an interesting solution to the
riddle of the 102254 isotope originally produced at
Berkeley.
The first observations at Berkeley confirmed that
its half-life was not three seconds as they had thought
earlier, but approximately the 55 ± 5 seconds found
by Donets and Shchegolev in 1965. But the 1959 expe­
riment seemed quite accurate and no matter how
Ghiorso and Flyorov racked their brains over the em­
barrassing discrepancy in the data, they could find
no reason for it. Polikanov, Druin, and Oganesian
visited America and discussed the situation there in
Ghiorso’s laboratory. They went over the whole expe­
riment together, step by step, and still no one could
find any appreciable error. But the discrepancy was
there! Finally new experiments revealed that the
activity obtained in 1959, both alpha decay and spon­
taneous fission, was due not to isotope 102254 at all
but, probably, to quite another one, 102252.
Such was the long drawn-out epic of element 102.
There still remained the business of its name.
175
 ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
but would an element?’ said a report ‘Russians See
Element 102’ in the January 1967 issue of Physics
Today.
‘Number 102, officially known as nobelium and occa­
sionally called rutherfordium, has been renamed jo-
liot-curium ...,’ it continued.
In spite of the journal’s apprehensions, naming of
the element did not become a serious problem.
Ghiorso wrote to Flyorov on 20 March 1967 that in
the end they had concluded that the simplest solution
to the problem of naming the element would be to
leave it in peace.
For the development of science it is not important
where and by whom a discovery is made. The main
thing is that it has been done. Science cannot help
becoming more and more international. Its torch is
handed on from generation to generation, and from
country to country. To master the forces of nature,
mankind unites its efforts.
Various groups of scientists have contributed greatly
to the discovery of the transuranic elements. And tho­
ugh they are only human, and every one of them, no
matter how selfless, would be delighted and happy to
name a discovery after his native land or a great na­
tional hero whose work had been for the welfare of
mankind, that cannot be a matter for disagreement
and is always settled, somehow or other, to mutual
satisfaction. We don’t have to look for examples.
Element 104, though nameless for two years, did
not suffer in the least and remained No. 104 just the
same when it legitimately received its high-sounding
name of ‘kurchatovium’ after the founder of Soviet
atomic science and technology, Igor Kurchatov.
The 104th element of the Periodic System may
prove the most interesting of all the transuranic ele-
176
ments, Glenn Seaborg, the famous discoverer of most
of them, has said.
Let us remind you that, in his theory, element 104
should start an absolutely new family of the heaviest
elements, for element 103, lawrencium, became the
‘last7 in the very heavy actinide series. So element
104 could hold many surprises for both physicists
and chemists. It was not clear where its place in the
Table was and what remarkable secrets it might dis­
close. For a hypothesis to become a theory it must be
verified by experiment. Only element 104 itself could
provide the evidence whether it really possessed the
properties ascribed to it and so confirm the new view
of Mendeleev’s Periodic Law.
So it was only natural that the synthesis and
proved separation of a sufficient quantity of
element 104 roused special interest in Berkeley and
Dubna.
But as we have already said, the further we go in
Mendeleev’s Table, the more unwillingly Nature ret­
reats, and the more stubbornly and cunningly she
clings to her secrets. At any rate, element 104 was
hidden away very carefully.
Ideally, this element could apparently be produced
by using a target made of the heaviest known element
(lawrencium) and the lightest of charged ions (the hyd­
rogen nucleus or proton) as projectiles. But even sub-
microscopic amounts of lawrencium were not availab­
le and its employment was still an unrealizable dream.
So the American physicists bombarded californium
with accelerated carbon ions. But the desired effect
was not obtained. At Dubna they decided to bring
up their ‘heavy artillery’ and proposed bombarding
plutonium with multiply charged ions of heavy neon-22.
The idea was that the plutonium nucleus, having
captured a neon ion, would become an excited com-
12— 663 177
Schematic diagram of the Dubna apparatus for synthe­
sizing isotopes of element 103

pound nucleus and be transmuted, after emitting four

neutrons, into the heavy isotope 104260. The reaction
cross-section would be very small, and it was supposed
that element 104 would only be produced once in
10 000 million events.
According to the experimental estimates, and con­
trary to the views of the theorists, its life was expec­
ted to be between one thousandth of a second and
178
one second. That is a very short period, virtually
an instant, but quite detectable by modern inst­
ruments.
Armed with this scanty and not very encouraging
information the young physicists, chemists, and tech­
nicians of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (Oga­
nesian, Lobanov, Kuznetsov, Druin, Perelygin, Kras-
noslav Gavrilov, Svetlana Tretyakova, and Vasily
Plotko), with Flyorov at their head, began to ‘round
up’ the mysterious element.
Unfortunately, the double recoil technique that had
proved so useful before could not be employed. The
heavier the nucleus, the more readily it decays and
breaks up into two fragments. Spontaneous fission
is the principal mode of decay of nuclei beyond the
limits of Mendeleev’s Table and that deprives physi­
cists of any chance of detecting them by their ‘daugh­
ters’. Another method just as reliable had to be thou­
ght of.
The compound neon-plutonium nucleus ejected four
neutrons to become a nucleus of 104260 only once in
a thousand million events. And this precious, one in
109, nucleus immediately disintegrated, breaking up
into fragments. Absolutely reliable detectors were
called for, fragment detectors completely insensitive
to other particles. Strange as it may seem, these won­
der detectors proved to be most ordinary materials,
mica and glass. As already mentioned, fission frag­
ments make pock-marks in glass when they hit it
that can easily be detected under a microscope after
the glass has been etched with a weak solution of hyd­
rofluoric acid. The main advantage of glass detectors
is that no other particles (protons, neutrons, or alpha
particles) will leave the slightest scratch on it. This
feature, you may remember, was employed in study­
ing the spontaneous fission of isomers. In fact all the
12* 179
techniques used were much the same, except for im­
provements, as those employed earlier.
The nuclei produced in the reaction flew out of the
target and landed on a moving nickel conveyor-belt
that withdrew them from the ‘hot zone’ and carried
them four metres past the glass recorders. While on
the belt, the nuclei split leaving tracks on the glass.
The half-life could easily be measured from the speed
of the conveyor and the distribution of the tracks.
But because the formation of nuclei of element 104
was so very rare an event, it was of no little importan­
ce to eliminate any interference that might be caused
by uranium fission fragments developing under the im­
pact of neutrons when the ion beam of ions hit the tar-
180
 get. Even one hundred millionth of one per cent of
uranium could frustrate all their efforts. For that rea­
son, plates of phosphate glass and lavsan, which have
a much lower content of uranium, were used instead
of ordinary glass.
The energies of the bombarding ions and the time
intervals between them were chosen so that they would
eliminate any background of other disintegrations, e.g.
the spontaneously fissioning isomers now interfering
and the nuclei of element-102 that would be produced
in abundance.
Element 104, was produced atom by atom, one every
five or six hours.
The researchers did not leave the cyclotron for days.
For greater reliability, i.e. for surer control and to
guarantee against breakdown, the experiments were
performed with two probes. In addition, the speed of
the belt and disks, and the spacing between the glas­
ses were varied.
Each experiment lasted 50 to 60 hours continuously.
When the repeated pressing of the counting button of
the analyser made the hands numb, a treadle was rig­
ged up so it could be pressed by foot.
The time spent on the machine was already counted
in months. The team took turns to sleep, and saw dan­
cing oscillograph serpents in their dreams. Flyorov
conducted diplomatic negotiations to soothe their in­
furiated wives.
It is probably very difficult sometimes to be the
wife of a physicist, and not only of a physicist, but of
any one ‘dedicated’, who has an overwhelming passion
for work. Oganesian, Shchegolev and Karnaukhov
were excellent husbands and fathers. They dearly
loved their wives, and their sons and daughters. But
when an experiment was on! There was only one wo­
man who could understand it, and then not without
181
difficulty. That was Oganesian’s mother. She used
to send ‘refreshments’ in to them at night, hot sau­
sages, sandwiches, tea in a thermos.
They well remember the day when an emitter with
a half-life of 0.3 second was registered. The result
was so feeble, so barely distinguishable, so like a
splash that they sneeringly called it the ‘w art’ on the
decay curve. All the same they managed to study
the w art’s excitation function—the dependence of
element yield upon the energy of the bombarding ions.
And to everyone’s delight it was what they had ex­
pected. Now it was a matter of statistics.
As soon as bombardment had finished, they all
gathered without a word in the photographic laborato­
ry where Svetlana Tretyakova and Perelygin were
busily engaged with the glasses.
‘Well, is there anything?’
‘Nothing. ’
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Here’s a track. Again
nothing.
‘This is sadistics not statistics,’ the lads said ironi­
cally.
The warning lamps lit up again: ‘Keep Clear’,
‘Cyclotron Working’.
Belts and glasses were replaced again and again,
and the battle for atoms went on. Somehow they had
to make the apparatus a little more sensitive. Gavri­
lov was looking for the best possible way to make tar­
gets. Plotko, the mechanic, was performing miracles
perfecting the probes, and was nick-named the Wizard.
At last an emitter with a lifetime of 0.3 second was
registered quite distinctly, reliably, and stably. Eve­
rything indicated that it was a heavy isotope of ele­
ment 104 with a mass of 260.
But as usual in the laboratory, they again began to
try and disprove the obvious. To guarantee against
182
possible error, uranium-238 was bombarded with ne­
on-22, and plutonium-242 with ions of oxygen-18
and neon-20. All these reactions were zero for element
104260, i.e. could never produce it. And in fact, to
their great joy no emitter with a life of 0.3 second was
detected.
All the experimental data of sufficient reliability
confirmed production of isotope 104260. On the memo­
rable day when the relentless and incorruptible Tretya­
kova confirmed production of 150 nuclei of the new
element Flyorov was in Moscow. After phoning him,
Druin rang me at Novosti out of friendship. I caught
Flyorov literally on the hop and somehow got into
his car. I ’d never have forgiven myself if I ’d missed
that chance to be in at the birth of a new element.
By six p.m. we were in Dubna. Everybody was ex­
cited and happy—Druin, Oganesian, Polikanov, Loba­
nov, Plotko, even Lyuba, the secretary, and Annie, the
typist, and no one thought of going home.
They plugged in the electric samovar that everyo­
ne in the laboratory is very fond of, and which is care­
fully hidden in the weirdest places from snooping fi­
remen in rolles of drawings, behind the concrete blocks
of the neutron shield, in the secretary’s safe.
While the samovar was heating, I made the most
of my scoop, asking numerous questions. Then I be­
gan writing the first article. We all edited it collecti­
vely. Around one o’clock in the morning reporters
from TASS and Moscow Radio arrived with a tape-
recorder, cameras, and flash equipment. We were
drinking tea from the samovar in the chief engineer’s
office and eating sandwiches that Oganesian’s thought­
ful mother had sent in. Flyorov produced a bottle of
Georgian wine from somewhere.
‘A vintage one’, he said, putting it on the table.
We drank the health of the new-born element and
183
V. A. Druin
its first 150 atoms, then the health of its parents. And
then we toasted its future ‘brothers’ and all expected
new elements up to number 150.
‘Give me something for a keepsake, please,’ I asked.
‘Would you like a disk with daughter nuclei?’
gallant Yuri Oganesian promptly asked in return.
‘Or some glasses with the tracks of fragments?’ sug­
gested Lobanov.
We left the laboratory on a summer night that smelt
of pines and the river, walking in a long line, hand
in hand, and wanted very much to sing but we couldn’t
because the town was still asleep.
At six a.m. Druin came to the hotel to drive me
back to Moscow. He had to make a report at nine at
the Kurchatov Institute. I had the article with me and
was impatient to inform the whole world of another
victory over nature. ^
All the way to Moscow Victor talked to me of his
visit to Ghiorso in America, and of the experiments
they were preparing to continue study of the proper­
ties of element 104.
In Berkeley, as soon as they finished modifying
HILAC, they would begin experiments to confirm
our discovery. The methods used would be the same;
only the reactions would be different: curium with
oxygen and californium with carbon.
They were preparing equipment of two types. One
would be used to measure the path of the recoil nuclei
and their angular distribution in order to show that
the characteristics of the spontaneously fissile emitter
with a life of 0.3 second corresponded to what was
expected from the compound nuclei needed to synthe­
size element 104. The second bit of equipment of im­
proved sensitivity was to detect alpha-active isotopes
of element 104.
The Dubna physicists were designing various logical
185
Yu. A. Oganesian
schemes for new experiments based on all the possible
combinations of reactions between plutonium and
neon.
Drum ’s team was preparing an experiment with a
much improved technique to study the alpha decay
of element 104. The idea behind it was that, with a
change in the energy of neon, five neutrons could be
ejected from the intermediate compound nucleus,
instead of four as before in the same plutonium-neon
reaction. A different isotope 104259 would be produced.
Unlike the even-even 1042fl0 it would have an even
number of protons but an odd number of neutrons
and so should prefer to emit alpha particles rather
than splitting spontaneously into two fragments. The
energy of the alpha particles could be expected to be
9.2 MeV and the half-life of the isotope 0.2 second.
In this field of energies background interference is
less and the nuclei knocked out of the target in the new
experiment would, moreover, not fall onto a metal
conveyor but into a helium jet, moving at the speed
of sound into an insulated space evacuated to a high
vacuum. A small brass collector, the shape of a Maltese
cross about a centimetre across, would be positioned
in the path of the jet. The helium would flow across
it but nuclei would be left on its surface and collected
on its arm. After bombardment the cross would be ro­
tated mechanically through 90 degrees to position it
in front of a semiconductor detector of high resolu­
tion while another arm would be ready for a new batch
of atoms from the target. Thus nuclei from the target’s
surface would not stick anywhere and the emitted al­
pha particles would not lose their energy, as they
would not wedge into belt or disk. That would permit
much more precise and selective measurement of their
energy, with an accuracy up to 10 keV, and the energy

187
of alpha particles, of course, is the main ‘visiting card’
for recognizing nuclei.
The mechanical device would be specially adjusted
so, that immediately particles with an energy around
9.2 to 9.4 MeV emerged, the motor would be stopped
for a certain time, depending on the half-life of isoto­
pe 102255. The thing was that alpha decay of element
104, as with element 102, should yield a daughter pro­
duct, this time an isotope of element 102 with a mass
of 255. Its half-life and energy had already been accu­
rately determined by double checks. That meant that
the radioactive properties of the new isotope would
be recorded in two ways: (a) directly from its ‘visiting
card’ (alpha-particles) and (b) from its ‘daughter’,
the remaining isotope 102255.
Two years went by. I was again in Dubna at the
Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (again in connection
with element 104). Now it was complete victory. The
laboratory’s chemists had found a way to determine
its chemical properties.
The accelerator had been stopped in the morning
‘for a break’ of 90 minutes while something was re­
adjusted; the heavy cast-iron door opened as if of its
own accord, the automatic lock hospitably inviting one
into the cavern of Sesame. Every time I enter this hu­
ge room with its high ceiling, and walk across the che­
quered tiles spelling out ‘Danger Area’, I always sud­
denly feel breathless with excitement. Say what you
will, it is no joke to peep directly into the very bowels
of the ‘furnace’ of modern sorcerers. On the left is a
small desk, an ordinary office one, nothing special.
There one must leave one’s wrist watch. If you don’t,
and approach the machine with it on, it will stop for
good and all. The magnetic field is too much for it.
The cooling water gurgles peacefully, and the heated
metal gives off a sweetish odour.
188
 ‘Don’t forget to stroke the lines of force,’ laughed
Anatole Pleve. It was not really a joke. Or rather, it
was our private joke. The first time I entered the hall
he had asked me whether I had ever felt magnetic
lines. I took offence, of course. Did he take me for a
silly chit? But without another word he had handed
me a screwdriver; as soon as I took hold of it I felt
that something pulling it away from me quite strong­
ly. If I relaxed my arm a little it was pulled quite
distinctly in a definite direction. Joking apart, I was
literally stroking magnetic lines of forces.
Through a small aperture with transparent lead
glass ionized gas gleamed all shades of pink heat;
ionized gas is plasma, the same as the neon that glows
in the tubes of electric signs, but quite different in
temperature and energy. Close to the aperture is the
place where the shining, corrugated copper ‘head’ of
the probe is inserted, brought directly up to the acce­
lerator on a light wheeled cart. But now the probe
was off to one side and a technician was removing a
cassette from it and giving it to the chemists (who
were now the big noises in the Laboratory). In a small
room separated from the cyclotron hall by a double
concrete wall was the realm of Ivo Zvara and Yuri
Chuburkov. Its walls were covered with transparent
tubes, very picturesque with their crimson, bright-
blue, and green liquids and gases. A small pump sig­
hed at regular intervals. Zvara and Chuburkov spent
day and night at the recorders. They can stay there
without their wives, Tamara and Ida, being offen­
ded; for they continue the research in a lab on the
floor above.
Before describing what these chemists thought up
(their role in the discovery of element 104 was a major
and responsible one, for this element was to become
the start of a new family in Mendeleev’s Table), let
189
us look briefly again at the problem of naming new
elements.
Element 104’s space remained without a name for
two years, despite the fact that it had been discovered.
Those two years were needed for repeated confirmation
of its discovery so that no shadow of doubt remained,
for the slightest doubt is all the stimulus a true scien­
tist needs to continue the search, the launching pad
for his flights of imagination. It took them two years
to know exactly where, in what place in the Periodic
Table, the new element (and its name) belonged.
Only then did the creators of element 104 have every
right to name their brain-child.
During those two years, we must add, Flyorov,
Druin, and Polikanov received many letters from
young Pioneers, scientists wintering in the Arctic,
seamen and engineers, doctors and journalists, sug­
gesting names for the new element. There was ‘mosco-
viunT and ‘sputnik’, ‘sovetium’ and ‘komsomolium’,
and ‘druzhbium’*. It was a regular competition. The
international team at the Laboratory decided the new
element should be christened kurchatovium, which was
approved by the administration and the Learned Coun­
cil of the Joint Institute.
After reporting its synthesis and identification to
the tenth anniversary session of Council Flyorov was
instructed to write the new name on the big Periodic
Table hanging in the conference hall, and he did so to
tumultuous applause.
NEW FLASH CHEMISTRY
It is an empirical rule that the most interesting
theses and papers are read at the most inappropriate
times. June 1966 was no exception.

* From Russian druzhba friendship

190
G. N. Flyorov writing the name of the new element
kurchatovium into the Periodic Table
 The working day was nearing its end. The weather
was super-hot, without a breath of wind. It was the
kind of day one wanted to go to the woods or to the
river, but I went to the chemical faculty of Moscow
University where Ivo Zvara was to defend his thesis
in the North Auditorium. For the second time. A month
earlier he had defended his candidate’s thesis. The
members of the Learned Council, having discussed
it, suggested he should submit it for a higher degree,
U.Sc. Ivo was delighted to agree.
The defence began with the traditional ritual. The
Learned Secretary read the application, with the can­
d id ate curriculum vitae, and the resolution of the
Learned Council on resubmission of the thesis. I had
known Zvara for a long time and, like many of his
‘fans’ in the hall, let the information go in one ear
and out the other.
Ivo Zvara had come to Moscow to study from Cze­
choslovakia and had attended more than one lecture
by eminent chemists in this same hall. After graduating
he had started work with Flyorov and had gradually
grown into an independent research worker, head of a
big research team. In two hours or so he would have
the degree of Doctor of Science conferred on him
(anticipating events I will tell you that he is now de­
puty director of the Laboratory).
When all the formalities were over, Ivo took a poin­
ter and went to the blackboard where his ‘charts’
were pinned. There were not many: a diagram of the
apparatus, a few of the most interesting graphs and
tables. The thesis was about the chemical properties
of recently synthesized element 104.
In the idyllic days when uranium was the last ele­
ment on Mendeleev’s Table, no one doubted that
thorium, say, belonged to the fourth group, protacti­
nium to the fifth, and the heavy outsider we are tal-
192
 m m i miamiim! mkmtmmh

IfW fflC MMHilHWX 1AEMEHT08

Ivo Zvara defending hisD . Sc. in chemistry at Moscow State

University

13—GG3
king about, uranium, to the sixth. And there was no
room whatsoever for doubt, as the chemical properties
of these elements, particularly of their compounds of
the highest valency, resembled those of hafnium,
tantalum, and tungsten respectively.
But those idyllic days had been pushed into the
past when the first transuranic elements made their
appearance. Neptunium, plutonium, and to some ex­
tent americium, strongly resembled uranium and
bore no resemblance to the elements of groups VII
and VIII, rhenium, osmium, and iridium. The pat­
tern was broken, and no periodicity was observable
in their properties.
), Curium, berkelium, and californium, which came
next, bore an amazing resemblance to the lanthanides.
The electronic shells of, say, curium and gadolinium,
or berkelium and terbium, proved very alike in struc­
ture, and so they possessed a common pattern of che­
mical properties.
All this led to the quite justified conclusion that the
14 elements following actinium belonged in fact to a
special family of actinides, like the 14 rare-earth ele­
ments, which begin their pedigree with lanthanum
(as we learned earlier).
So, the patterns long since observed in the properties
of the first actinides had been fortuitous. But that is
not what concerns us, as it is now quite common know­
ledge. All we are interested in are the consequences
resulting from identification of the new family, which
is that the recently discovered element 103 was the
last branch on the family tree of the actinides. The ele­
ments after it should be chemically analogous to haf­
nium, tantalum, etc. If Mendeleev were still alive he
would call them ‘ekahafnium’ and ‘ekatantalum’.
These elements should not only differ from the acti­
nides but also differ from one another. The halcyon
194
clays when chemical properties could easily be predic­
ted had come to an end. No one knew what lay beyond
No. 103. Hence the understandable interest with which
chemists awaited information on the behaviour of
No. 104.
The chemists would gladly have rallied round to
synthesize new atoms not found on earth. But No.
1 0 1 , mendelevium, was the last transuranic element

whose chemical properties had been studied. Elements

102 and 103 had literally been produced in dozens
of atoms that lived for only a few seconds. And that
was not enough to determine chemical properties.
They could only just manage the physical ones! That
is how matters stood with elements 102 and 103, a
situation that was just bearable. Theory could ‘re­
construct’ on paper chemical reactions that no one
had detected; but when it came to element 104, it was
another kettle of fish. New research techniques were
needed that would enable the chemical properties of
single atoms to be studied in ultrashort time. The job
was definite enough but unbelievably difficult. ‘Just
to mix a solution in a glass with a little stick takes
about a second’, Ivo Zvara says. ‘But the life of an
isotope of element 104 is 0.3 second! And only one
atom can be produced in five hour’s continuous opera­
tion of the accelerator. We had to invent a kind of
chemical dredge that would continuously separate the
needed atoms from the barren rock.’
It took four years to develop the techniques and
another two years for the experiments. Zvara and his
colleagues, Chuburkov, R.Zaletka, T. S. Zvarova,
M. R. Shalaevsky, B.V. Shilov, and others, worked
on the assumption that element 104 was not an
actinide. If that were correct, it should resemble haf­
nium in chemical properties and its higher chlorine
compounds or chlorides would be very volatile, like
13* 195
those of hafnium, whereas the higher chlorides of
actinides were non-volatile and could easily be filte­
red out from element 104.
They performed dozens of experiments to find the
best materials for transporting tubes, actinide filters,
and detectors to record the precious nuclei of element
104. And dozens more experiments, each lasting two
or three days, were needed to select the optimum tem­
perature of the walls and gas, and the best compounds
lor the reaction with ‘ekahafnium’. They proved to
be chlorides of niobium and zirconium.
The principle of the experiment was quite simple.
A neon ion hitting a plutonium-242 target would
knock out an atom of the element sought, No. 104.
The recoil nuclei would be slowed down in a stream
of gas flowing behind the target. If free chlorine were
present in the gas, the atoms would interact with it
to produce 104 tetrachloride, (104)C14.
Chlorides of analogous elements were added to the
gas so that the precious molecules would not be lost
in the immense (on an atomic scale) space.
Atoms of actinides formed as a side effect would be
readily absorbed by the walls, while molecules of
(104)C14 and their analogues would be carried away in
the hot flux and pass through special filters absorbing
any chlorine compounds of actinides that had escaped
capture in the walls. Then they would pass to the spon­
taneous nuclear fission counter. In disintegrating,
the nucleus of element 104 signals that the atom has
completed its ‘gas ru n ’ from start (target) to finish
(detector), and that means that it has behaved chemi­
cally in the same way as its analogue, hafnium.
The whole thing takes less than a third of a second!
The nuclear reaction products emerging from the
thin target and colliding with vapours niobium and
zirconium chlorides enter into exchange reactions with
196
them, and themselves become chlorides that are then
carried by the stream of gas to the radiation detector.
Elements of the third group are sorted out by the walls
and deposited on the special filters. The technique
enables chemical investigations to be performed di­
rectly in the cyclotron chamber. There was no other
way, as nature gave investigators of element 104 too
little time; so they were forced to develop this intri­
cate method of analysis, which was not only continuous
but also could begin a fraction of a second after the
atom was produced.
In these crucial experiments element 104 imparted
its properties precisely and unambiguously; it was not
an actinide. It resembled hafnium, and so began a new
series on the Periodic Table.
When Zvara finished reading his paper, almost no
questions were asked. For one thing, the Learned Coun­
cil was already well acquainted with his work from
the previous defence, and for another—and this, of
course, was the main reason—the information presen­
ted spoke for itself.
All three of the official opponents said as much. One
of them, V. I. Goldansky, Corresponding Member of
the USSR Academy of Sciences, with a reputation for
wit, remarked:
‘This is quite unusual work. Everything in it is
unique, both the object studied and the techniques
developed. Therefore, I shall indulge myself by put­
ting aside my official testimonial and simply speaking
about the problems facing radiochemistry. Since we
have gone beyond the limits of the actinide series,
every new element may display most unexpected pro­
perties. The technique presented for your judgement
is the more interesting that it can also detect proper­
ties that we are not in any way expecting....’
After the formalities of the defence were at last
197
completed (the result, unlike those of the experiments
performed, could be predicted quite accurately), Zva-
ra was surrounded by friends, relatives, and colleagues.
It was all as it should be. The triumph, too. And it
was quite in order that there are not, and cannot be,
any limits to scientific search. From the scraps of con­
versation I heard I could guess that they were already
talking about what element 114, and possibly 126,
would be like.

HOW MANY NEW ELEMENTS GAN THERE BE?

Element 104—kurchatovium—is known. Element

105 was produced not so long ago at Dubna and it was
suggested that it be called after that great physicist
Niels Bohr. The time when synthesis of new superhea­
vy isotopes can be planned like the production of con­
ventional products, it would seem, is not very distant.
And then what?
At any rate, experiments to synthesize elements
114 and 126 are being prepared both at Dubna and at
Berkeley. Ideas on this are evolving quite rapidly
and radically as our knowledge of the nucleus deepens
and techniques are improved. But is it necessary to
go so far? Will the cost and effort be justified?
It is not, of course, a matter of ‘scalp hunting’.
Or just of possible industrial applications. Then why
are they trying to synthesize as many different isoto­
pes as possible? The possible permutations and combi­
nations of protons and neutrons are practically infini­
te. The actual number of protons, however, and the
number of neutrons they can bind, is quite definite
and is probably strictly fixed, and all the proton-neu­
tron combinations cannot by any means, be realized.
It is very, very important to know which combina-
198
lions have been realized in nature, and which not, as
that will let us discover the laws governing the struc­
ture of the nucleus and construct a more accurate
model of it.
But, as we know, the heavier a nucleus is, the more
particles it contains, and the shorter is its life, and
hence the more difficult it is to produce. A nucleus
crammed with particles tends to break up spontaneous­
ly. The more protons there are in it, the greater are
the Coulomb forces of repulsion and the greater the
probability that the nuclear restraining forces will
be unable to counter them.
So an increase in charge increases the probability
of spontaneous fission. Does that mean that very hea­
vy nuclei are virtually inaccessible? Or might there
not be tiny islands of relative stability in the sea of
unstable heavy elements? Or is it impossible to deve­
lop the superfast recording units to ‘catch’ such short­
lived nuclei? What forecasts can be made about it?
What do the theorists think? And what are the experi­
menters’ ideas?
Let us hear what physicists have to say about furt­
her advance beyond the Table.
In April 1969 the Scientific American published an
article ‘The Synthetic Elements’ by Seaborg and
Justin Bloom, in which they wrote that ‘theoretical
calculations suggest the existence of closed nucleon
shells at Z = 114 and N =184 that exhibit great resis­
tance to decay by spontaneous fission.
‘Enhancing the prospects for the actual synthesis
and identification of superheavy nuclei is the fact
that the doubly magic nucleus 298114 is at the centre
of a rather large island of stability in a sea of sponta­
neous fission. Stability against decay by spontaneous
fission is highest at the centre, and instability increa­
ses as the edges of the region are reached.
199
 ‘Indications are that the superheavy elements can
be created only by bombarding target nuclei with suf­
ficiently energetic projectiles consisting of heavy ions.
Many experimental difficulties will have to be overco­
me. The yield of the desired product nuclei is predicted
to be very small because the overwhelming proportion
of the nuclear reactions lead to fission rather than to
synthesis through amalgamation of the projectile and
the target nucleus. The currently available target
nuclei and projectiles lead to neutron-deficient nuclei
that lie outside the island of stability. Projectile ions
that will soon be available with the required energy
should lead to nuclei that are just barely within the
island and therefore will have half-lives so short as
to make them difficult to detect. To reach the centre
of the island may require the construction of new ac­
celerators or modification of existing ones in order to
furnish the heavy and energetic ions needed.’
These suppositions had been developed and concreti­
zed in 1967 by Flyorov, who put forward a number
of daring ideas.
‘I am sure’, he said, ‘that we will find a way out of
the region of instability where we are now stuck. Ana­
lysing the possibilities we have concluded that if spon­
taneous fission is the main factor preventing synthesis
of new isotopes and elements, we will have to use the
old trick of experimenters. We will have to make this
interfering factor work for us. We shall have to try
and synthesize new elements by means of nuclear fis­
sion. How? By raising the charge of the bombarding
nucleus higher and higher. Then the fission fragments
of the resulting nuclei will gradually have higher char­
ges. In the long run, in the extreme case, say, when
uranium is bombarded with uranium we shall be able
to produce almost all the isotopes of the most remote
and heavy elements.
200
Alberto Ghiorso, Glenn Scaborg, George Flyorov (left to
right) at Dubna

‘In our laboratory at Dubna Oganesian and his che­

mists are already working on broad systematic rese­
arch into the fission products of heavy nuclei induced
by multiply charged ions. The experiments have shown
that this method of producing isotopes is more effective
than the normal ones using hot neutrons even when
splitting uranium by neon.’
Encouraging estimates came from the theorists in
1968. Speaking that summer at the international con­
ference on nuclear structure in Dubna, Flyorov dwelt
specially on them.
‘It used to be thought until recently that the limit
of the periodic system was determined by competition
of the forces of surface tension and the Coulomb forces
of repulsion. But when we consider the stability of
14— 663 201
 the heaviest nuclei, we must take into account the
non-uniformity of the distribution of energy over the
nucleons, the “shell effect” in the liquid drop model.
The calculations made by our Soviet theorists Stru-
tinsky, Muzychka, and Nemirovsky, and also those
of the joint group of American, Swedish, and West
German workers, have indicated that the disastrously
rapid fall in the decay curve of the heavy elements
should “break” somewhere between elements 114 and
126. These nuclei and adjacent ones may prove stable
and live thousand of times longer than would be ex­
pected if they obeyed the general rules. The accuracy
of these results, of course, is far from what experimen­
ters would like, because even a minor error in the cal­
culations can give a big deviation from the expected
lifetime; but of the fact that a region of stability of
the heaviest nuclei exists there is now no doubt.
‘From the work of the American physicist W .J.
Swiatecki it is clear that the life of the most stable
isotope of element 114, as regards spontaneous fission
is years (an analogous result is given by estimates of
its full life, including beta and alpha decay and elec­
tron capture). Similar calculations have also been
made for elements of Z =122—126, but their lives,
as regards beta and alpha decay, are not expected to
exceed 10“ 3 second. So the question arises, how are
we to get to the island of stability? We may land there
by jumping over the region of unstable elements (1 0 0 -
1 1 0 ); but that can only be done by reactions with hea­

vy ions.
‘Since 1967 a group of American physicists—Swia­
tecki, Thompson, and others—have been trying to
synthesize element 114. The heaviest particle that
can be accelerated in HILAC at present is argon-40,
so they have used the following reaction:
argon *g + curium2^ = 114288 114284 4^

202
The 114^84 isotope is very far from the double magic
nucleus 114288, so hopes of getting 114 from this reac­
tion were not great. In fact, the effect was not observed.
A more optimistic reaction would seem to be:
calcium gjj + plutonium2^ = 114292 - > 114288 + 4n

‘Calcium-48 has now been accelerated in our labo­

ratory and background experiments carried out. But
synthesis of element 114 will be made much easier as
soon as it is possible to accelerate ions heavier than
krypton. Thus, fission of uranium by xenon 5 4 s would
most likely yield the isotope 114306, and the excita­
tion energy of the fragment would correspond to the
emission of four to six neutrons. As we proceed to the
heavier elements (Z = 120—126), it will be easier to
choose the necessary combination of target and ion
to synthesize isotopes with a mass number of 284.
‘I would also like to remark that when we have
heavier ions the fission fragments will fill up the grea­
ter part of the Periodic System, so there will be a
chance of detecting new isotopes of any element,
stable or unstable.
‘Now I should like to touch on the very promising
results reported by Prof. C. F. Powell on behalf of
a group of British physicists. This team studied the
elements in cosmic rays, employing photographic emul­
sion. Some years ago they detected high-energy traces
of uranium in cosmic rays. More recently Powell’s
group sent photographic emulsions up in space pro­
bes and detected tracks in them made by particles
whose ionizing capacity suggested that there might
be elements among them with a charge equal to or
greater than 110. If these results are confirmed in the
near future, it will be possible to prove that super­
heavy elements can exist and can be synthesized.
14* 203
 ‘Given the particle velocity of cosmic rays, their
densities, fission cross-sections, and other factors, we
can roughly estimate the probable life of the super­
heavy elements detected in them. These estimates
give an upper lim it of the order of several million
years. Moreover, if we can detect superheavy elements
in cosmic rays with long lives there must be a group
of isotopes with shorter lives that can be synthesized
and studied on heavy-ion accelerators.
‘The main task now, and a very difficult one, is to
find a method of accelerating uranium ions and of
demonstrating experimentally where and what types
of reactions are feasible.
‘The old cyclotron at Dubna enabled us to pass from
helium to calcium, that is to increase the charge of
accelerated nuclei by a factor of ten. Now the job is
to create a machine that will let us go on from cal­
cium to uranium, i.e. from number 20 to number 92.
‘Personally it seems to me that this is the direction
in nuclear physics and chemistry which will give the
very best opportunities for synthesizing superheavy
elements. ’
Alberto Ghiorso considers that the two most impor­
tant obstacles preventing production of elements hea­
vier than 104 are their formation cross-sections and
their half-lives, and that the heaviest target practic­
able today is a long-lived isomer of einsteinium-254.
In order to produce element 105, Ghiorso thought that
at least six protons would need to be captured through
bombardment, i.e. a carbon ion. The cross-section
of the reactions would probably be less than one mic­
robarn. To produce elements 106 and 107, the target
would have to be struck by ions of nitrogen and oxy­
gen, but their cross-sections are smaller by one or
two orders of magnitude. The half-lives periods of the
isotopes that could he produced in these reactions
204
would become progressively shorter and shorter and
the difficulties involved increasingly greater. But the
idea that these estimates could be mistaken prompts
one, Ghiorso said, to think it is worthwhile trying.
The view, held for some time, that the heaviest ele­
ments may prove to have a relatively stable region
has not yet been refuted by anyone, and so Ghiorso
thinks fusion of uranium with uranium is very pro­
mising. That could yield transuranic elements, both
light and heavy, proton radioactive and neutron radio­
active, and the excitation of the nuclei might prove
to be not very high.
Recent theoretical work, like that of Strutinsky
and Muzychka, mentioned by Flyorov, has depicted
most alluring prospects for the synthesis of heavy
elements. Having analysed in more detail the effect
on nuclear stability of a filling of the proton and
neutron shells close to ‘magic numbers’ (114 protons
and 184 neutrons) they came to an interesting conclu­
sion. Their calculations suggested that such a filling,
contrary to the predictions based upon the liquid
drop model, should lead to an extremely big increase
in stability of the nucleus as regards spontaneous fis­
sion.
‘There is real hope of being able to produce compa­
ratively long-lived isotopes of elements with atomic
numbers close to 114 and masses of 298,’ says Stru­
tinsky. ‘And Muzychka’s calculations have made
it possible even to say where the region of stability
will be found among the heaviest isotopes of these
nuclei. ’
Roughly speaking, the stability of element 114
will diminish a million times every two mass units.
Therefore its isotopes with 296 and 298 nucleons
should be the most stable. That is something
concrete.
205
 But what will be the chemical properties of the most
distant elements of the periodic system?
An interesting hypothesis has been suggested by
Goldansky.
‘In advancing beyond element 118 we shall appa­
rently be marching into the eighth period of the Men­
deleev system. Various scientists have suggested
that the arrangement of this period will be built the
same as the sixth and seventh, i.e. it will contain 32
elements, element 126 being the chemical analogue
of plutonium. It seems to me, however, that the si­
tuation will be much more interesting. Advance into
the region of elements yet unknown and the laws go­
verning the filling of electronic shells, formulated
by Vsevolod Klechkovsky, lead to the conclusion that
the eighth period of Mendeleev’s system will contain
50 elements (that does not mean, of course, that we’ll
be able to produce all 50 of them), and that, instead
of a 14-element group with properties similar to those
of the rare-earth elements and actinides, this period
will incorporate a group of 18 elements not encount­
ered in the periodic system, from No. 121 to No. 138.
‘The structure of the three outer electron shells,
the sixth, seventh, and eighth, in the atoms of these
18 elements—let us call them octadecanides—will be
quite similar and they will differ only in the structure
of the fourth shell from the outside or fifth from the
nucleus (i.e. in the number of the “g-electrons”).
Therefore all the octadecanides will differ in chemical
properties even less than the rare-earth elements do.
The nearest analogue of all these 18 elements among
known elements will be actinium.
‘The possibility of such a structure in the eighth
period will necessarily have to be taken into account
in future radiochemical separation and investigation
of elements in the vicinity of atomic number 126,
206
otherwise we may repeat the situation that experimen­
ters found themselves in before Seaborg’s actinide
theory, when attempts to isolate and chemically iden­
tify elements with Nos. 95 and 96 from their oxida­
tion to the hexavalent state failed.
‘From that it is clear that synthesis of the elements
of the eighth period and study of their physico-chemical
properties will be of great interest not only for nuclear
physicists but also for everyone concerned with ge­
neral and inorganic chemistry.’
Despite gloomy hypotheses that very heavy nuclei,
particularly those of elements with atomic numbers
higher than 137, will collapse owing to their exceed­
ingly high positive charge, Wheeler has shown that
the electrons of atoms with atomic numbers even much
higher than 137 will behave ‘normally’ because of
the unlimited extent of the nucleus. For, from the
angle of accepted views of the structure of electron
shells, there are no limits to the existence of super­
heavy elements. The only limitations come from the
instability of the nuclei themselves.
To sum up: theory authorizes the existence of ele­
ments up to No. 137. From a systematization of nuc­
lear properties it can be supposed that the expected
life of new transuranic elements with atomic numbers
from 105 to 108 will be in the range of a few micro­
seconds to several seconds.
The isotopes of transuranic elements with nuclei
containing 160 to 184 neutrons are expected to be
more stable as regards spontaneous fission.
Present-day data give grounds for thinking that
nuclei with 114 protons and 184 neutrons, and 126
protons and 184 neutrons, will be especially stable,
that is isotopes of the element 114298 and of element
126310.
That is how the theoretical forecasts and hopes look.
207
 But what are the possibilities of experiment?
‘For us the report of theorists on the existence of
“islands of stability” was like the cry of “Land ho!”
to Christopher Columbus’s sailors, * Flyorov recalls.
The ‘hunt for supernuclei’ began first in his laboratory
in two directions; the first, as before, on an accelerator
for multicharged ions, to which a U-200 accelerator
has been cunningly joined. The tandem machine ena­
bled heavy elements (calcium and xenon) to be acce­
lerated without any extra special outlay, and not
only allowed work to begin on the synthesis of element
106 as soon as 105 had been obtained but also p6 r^
mitted them to move on to the ‘islands of stability’,
elements 122 to 126. The reactions of nuclei with heavy
ions are much more varied and yield a much wider
spectrum of products, and still give experimental and
theoretical physicists much trouble, since they have
to build new models of nuclear interactions much
more complicated than the merging of drops.
Another difficulty is that there is no firm ground,
and that it is necessary to feel one’s way. All that is
known is the region where there may be something;
but the extrapolation of properties by analogy with
Mendeleev’s Table is so tenuous that it is impossible
to rely on it. All of which, naturally, does not make
the job any easier, though physicists are full of op­
timism.
It would help them greatly if they could obtain po­
sitive results in the second direction of the ‘h u n t’,
namely in looking for supernuclei in nature. That
search also began five years ago (around 1968) with
what seemed a trifle.
If element 114 is an analogue of lead, one might
try looking for it in very old stained-glass windows,
in the glass in contact with the leads, or in crystal
glass containing lead. The Czechoslovak and Polish
208
workers in the Laboratory brought bits of fourteenth
century glass from old churches in their countries;
and the Russian Museum in Leningrad provided frag­
ments from wineglasses of the time of Ivan the Ter­
rible.
Hundreds of samples passed through the hands of
the Dubna radiochemists, Svetlana Tretyakova and
Vladimir Perelygin. In some they detected strange
traces resembling the disintegration tracks of a super­
heavy element. Then an old friend of the Dubna team,
Dr. Peter Fowler, arrived from England. Calculations
based on the known age of the Solar system and the
life of uranium and plutonium indicated that the
synthetic element plutonium must have existed in the
E arth’s crust in a concentration of 10‘ 2 5 gram per
gram. That is an infinitesimally small quantity when
one considers that the concentration of uranium is
2 x l 0 " 6 gram per gram. But there it is! Some theore­
tical propositions indicated that nuclei of superheavy
elements might be formed in the flare-up of superno­
vas or in neutron stars and reach the Earth in cosmic
rays. From Fowler’s experiments it followed that one
atom of a superheavy element might strike every thous­
and square metres of the E arth’s surface in an hour
(or ten atoms per square metre per annum). Not very
dense, it must be admitted, but surely places could
be found where particles from cosmic rays might be
accumulated for thousands of years, isolated from
terrestrial substances.
In 1970 physicists from Dubna went, with the back­
ing of the Institute of Oceanology (USSR Academy of
Sciences), to the central area of the Pacific Ocean on
the research vessel Vityaz. From great depths of be­
tween five and eight thousand metres they brought
up nine tons of odd rocks (dull, black, perfect spheres)
of uncontaminated iron and manganese, known as
209
iron-manganese concretions, of ancient volcanic or
cosmic deposition. To process them Vladimir Voro­
paev’s group and workers from the All-Union Non-
ferrous Metallurgy Research Institute developed a new
technology for the recovery of highly volatile elements
(as it is supposed the superheavies would be). This
technology, incidentally, like others developed by
physicists, is very useful in industry.
In 1971 three expeditions went into the attack: one
on Kamchatka for volcanic ash; another (jointly with
the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy) headed by
Chnburkov, one of the Laboratory’s leading chemists,
for underground water and hot springs on the Chele­
ken Peninsula in Turkmenia. In the broiling sun of
the desert a quartet of trailbreakers passed two mil­
lion litres of underground water through an ion-ex -
change column, filtering 500 tons of salts from it, and
separating from the salts metals that were analogues
of superheavy elements (lead, thallium, etc.). Then
they took the saturated resins from the column back
to their laboratory for investigation by nuclear me­
thods.
The third expedition went beyond the Arctic Circle
to the Franz Josef Land archipelago. There, on Hayes
Island, is a peculiar lake, known as Cosmic Lake, a
relic of the Ice Age, whose geological age has been
estimated at between 7000 and 10 000 years. Its sur­
face is constantly covered with a layer of ice two
metres thick, which does not allow plankton to de­
velop. On the bottom is a layer of silt half a metre
thick that might just preserve superheavy elements,
or traces of their decay. On 26 August 1971 another
quartet from Dubna, led by Vladimir Pokrovsky, set
out on the M/s Lena for Hayes Island. They had been
given only eight days by the Murmansk Shipping
Line, the time needed to discharge and load the ship,
210
and in that time they had to extract at least a ton
of silt. The lads worked with a will, and by the date
of departure had loaded onto the ship eleven tons of
silt, packed in wooden boxes. The vessel was not de­
layed for a minute, although there was a very tense
moment during the loading of the last two boxes,
when their tracked cross-country vehicle went through
the ice and had to be pulled out by a tractor. But all
was well, and the ancient silt reached Dubna safely.
Concretions, silt, volcanoes, underground waters—
all are ‘earthly’ objects. But there is also ‘primitive
m atter’ available, the protoplanetary matter from
which the stars and worlds of the Universe are form­
ed, though considerably altered. In its pure form it
can only be found in outer space, but occasionally
it falls on the Earth in the form of meteorites.
Meteorites most likely preserve superheavy elements
or traces of their fission or disintegration. There is a
hypothesis that xenon is a decay product of the su-
perheavy elements they are hunting so assiduously
at Dubna. Meteorites are far from identical in their
nuclear composition. Those in which there is an ab­
normal amount of xenon are called carbonaceous chon­
drites. They have another, most important feature;
they have almost no uranium. And uranium is the
chief obstacle to the search as it is the only known
terrestrial clement that, like the suporhoavios, divides
spontaneously. Traces of its decay can be taken for
traces of a superheavy element, which makes things ter­
ribly difficult with supersensitive apparatus. So the less
uranium there is, the more sensitive the analysis.
Another advantage of meteorites is that exactly how
much of the superelements would be found in them
can be calculated as a ratio of uranium, since the
rate of half-decay (the half-life) of each element in
it, and the age and size of the meteorite itself, are
211
precisely known. For greatly altered terrestrial
substances the calculations are much more difficult to
make.
But carbonaceous chondrites fall when and where
they list, without regard for the desires of physicists.
The individual examples found are preserved in mu­
seums and are of immense scientific and monetary
value, national treasures. The Dubna scientists de­
veloped fine techniques for studying them without
breaking them up or altering their composition. That
in itself is a great achievement of nuclear science, for
it is impossible to bombard a specimen even with
neutrons without irreversibly altering it. Conse­
quently, neither neutron activation analysis nor pro­
portional counters, in which the material studied
is ground to a powder, were suitable.
A supersensitive apparatus with a background noise
equal to one pulse a year was used by Andrew Popeko
and Nicholas Skobolev. It cannot be used in any pre­
mises on the surface of the Earth, for it is ‘swamped’
by cosmic rays. So it had to be installed 500 metres
down in a dry salt mine in Transcarpathia, which was
exactly right for studying earthly samples of silt,
metals, and ash.
The meteorites so needed, the Efremovna and Sara­
tov, were furnished under a gentlemen’s agreement
(which was scrupulously observed) by the USSR
Academy of Sciences and sent to the mining village
of Solotvino in Transcarpathia. Then Ivo Zvara, now
Corresponding Member of the Czechoslovak Academy
of Sciences, brought a valuable gift from America
(where he had been conducting a joint experiment
with American physicists) from the U.S. National
Museum in Washington—a sample of the Alendo me­
teorite that fell in northern Mexico. The first results
were hopeful.
212
 At the time of the Communist Subbotnik* in the
USSR, on 21 April 1973, several workers from the
Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Eichler
from the German Democratic Republic and Plotko,
Perelygin, and Chuburkov of the USSR, developed
a new technique for chemical extraction of the glass­
like substance, olivine, from meteorites. One gram
of olivine, after wandering in space for tens of millions
of years, accumulates as many tracks of heavy and
superheavy elements as two tons of plastic or photo­
graphic emulsion would if orbited for a whole year.
No one, however favourably disposed to the people
at Dubna, could put two tons into orbit for them for
a year. So five kilograms of the Maryalahti meteorite
which is especially rich in olivine, was donated to
them for joint research with the Mongolian State
University and Helsinki University in Finland.
Search in nature, trials with synthetic elements
created in the laboratory, all mean using more po­
werful and more precise equipment. A new accelera­
tor for multicharged ions is being built at Dubna that
will accelerate such heavy elements as lead and ura­
nium. The Superhilac is coming into use (at the time
of writing) in the USA, and two even more powerful
ones are being built in the Federal German Republic.
This heightened interest in heavy ions is not simply
excited by the importance, romance, and excitement
of the search for new elements. The nuclear physics
of the next decade will basically be the physics of
heavy ions—such is the view of a frequent visitor to
Dubna, the famous Danish physicist Aage Rohr. The

* S u b b o tn ik , a Soviet custom of working voluntarily on a

Saturday without pay. The proceeds of the country-wide sub­
botnik of April 21 are devoted to scientific and social projects
of national importance, like cancer research.—E d i t o r .

213
Soviet physicists Flyorov, Vladlen Barashenkov, and
Muzychka agree with him. Another, perhaps no less
important aspect of heavy ions has been discovered
quite recently that may not only hold the future for
nuclear physics but become the basis of an entirely
new branch of engineering.
‘A beam of heavy ions is now in about the same po­
sition as a laser beam ten or fifteen years ago,’ Ba­
rashenkov (deputy director of the Duhna Laboratory
of Nuclear Reactions) affirms.
A laser beam acts on matter at a single point, heat­
ing it strongly; a beam of heavy ions can be directly
wedged into the inner nuclear structure of matter
and alter its chemical composition according to a pre­
ordained programme. The remarkable property of
heavy ions, the possibility of ‘driving’ a big chunk
of nuclear matter into another one, that is to say of
acting on any property of any material, opens up
unlimited prospects for engineering. It is a special
feature of the process that it goes on at comparatively
low temperatures and permits almost full automation
and 100 per cent reproduction of the properties of
the new materials.
By bombarding silicon or germanium detectors,
which are widely used for rapid activation analysis
by prospecting geologists and environmental physio­
logists (to check the environment), with ions of boron,
phosphorus, or tantalum, the quality of the semicon­
ductors can be improved. By regulating the depth of
the material bombarded, the size of which depends on
the type of ion used and its energy, and the means
used to etch it. Thus these nuclear filters (or screens
or ‘nucleopores’ as they are also called) have openings
of ideally exact shape, of a number and size easily
controlled. Molecular-virus filters can now be obtained
varying in diameter from 40 Angstrom units to a few
214
microns. Since bacteria are little more than a fifth
of a micron in diameter, nuclear filters enable beer,
wine, and liquid foods of every kind to be sterilized
cold. In microbiology nuclear screens are used to sepa­
rate various types of cells, (in particular to sort out
cancerous blood cells), to obtain drinking water clean­
sed of bacteria, to purify air, dyes, etc. The cost of
a nuclear filter is not very high. The preliminary esti­
mates made at Dubna are that they will cost around
one rouble a square metre (those now obtained in
nuclear reactors, which are much inferior in quality,
cost ten roubles a square decimetre, or one thousand
times as much).
Study of new atoms is very important for understand­
ing the world around us. And difficult as each new step
in this field is the expenditure in it will be recouped
a hundred times over.
In the long run there is only one truth, that great
physicist Albert Einstein used to say. One should
be venturesome and faithfully devoted to science to
sacrifice the whole of his life and all his strength no
matter how slim his chance to succeed may be.
A little serendipity would not be amiss, we would
add. But where there is boldness and devotion to sci­
ence, serendipity is never slow to come. If now you
also believe that, I can count my job well done.
 TO THE READER

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The synthesis of elements heavier than uranium has
opened up new spheres in our knowledge of nature and
new fields of nuclear physics and chemistry. The trans-
uranic elements, the heaviest in Mendeleev’s Periodic
Table, are throwing new light on the structure of the
atomic nucleus and the mechanisms of reactions be­
tween nuclei, enabling us to understand the chemical pro­
perties of newly produced elements, and to clarify
ideas on the Periodic Law.
The story of current nuclear physics is full of surprises
and is an intriguing tale of imaginative exploration
and painstaking, persistent search, of heartbreaking
failure and unexpected results. The author, Elaine Knor-
re, a science correspondent of the Novosti News Agency,
knows many of the people involved personally, and
has herself been present at some of the crucial mo­
ments in the discovery of new elements. Thus she has an
inside knowledge
her account a j
attractive and re
Other popularl;
physics are The
the Atoms, both