nobelium

Synthesized, radioactive, metallic element of the actinide series, atomic number 102, relative atomic mass 259. It is synthesized by bombarding curium with carbon nuclei.

It was named in 1957 after the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where it was claimed to have been first synthesized. Later evaluations determined that this was in fact not so, as the successful 1958 synthesis at the University of California at Berkeley produced a different set of data. The name was not, however, challenged. In 1992 the International Unions for Pure and Applied Chemistry and Physics (IUPAC and IUPAP) gave credit to Russian scientists in Dubna for the discovery of nobelium.