Abstract
DELIVERING this year's Harrison Howe Lecture on November 18 to the Rochester Section of the American Chemical Society, Prof. G. T. Seaborg referred to the importance which the newly discovered trans-uranium elements may achieve for general chemistry. Those of comparatively short life-time, and therefore high radioactivity, will always require special training for their safe handling ; consequently, neither plutonium (element 94), nor americium (element 95), which only recently has been prepared in pure form, can be handled without certain precautions ; neptunium (element 93), however, with a life-time of more than two million years, may eventually find its way into the ordinary chemical laboratory as one of the rarer elements. Curium (element 96), which so far occupies the last place in the Periodic System, is remarkable in being the element with the highest atomic weight ; Prof. Seaborg expects that, in addition to the isotope 242, which is produced by the neutron bombardment of americium, still heavier ones with atomic masses up to 246 may be obtained.
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Trans-uranium Elements in Chemistry. Nature 159, 21 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/159021d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/159021d0